Apple announces officially-unlocked iPhones. Let the open-source unlock conspiracy theories begin, and more…

 

Currently:

As you might have heard, Apple on Wednesday announced an official Apple-unlocked iPhone for “legitimate” sale in Germany on Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile network. This announcement was set forth to “comply with a court injunction issued after Vodafone challenged its [T-Mobile's] exclusive lock on the device,” Aude Lagorce reports for MarketWatch. “T-Mobile will start selling the phone without a contract for 999 euros ($1,480) and continue to offer it at 399 euros when purchased with a two-year commitment, the company said in a press release,” Lagorce reports.Whatever you may think of the iPhone, $1500 (or $1480, to be exact), is a heck of a lot of “greenies” to shell over for a generation one product just to use it with other networks. Moreover, it’s not clear whether the phone will work as well on other networks as it does on T-Mobile’s network. For instance, will EDGE connectivity be functional on other carrier’s networks and will visual voice-mail work, since it’s a very carrier-specific feature that needs to be implemented on the provider’s end. (A little side note: I recommend using CallWave for voicemail even over the iPhone’s visual voicemail. I use it and have become addicted to the ability to check my voice messages not only in the order I choose to but to do so from any web-connected computer/device through a browser. I will be posting my review of CallWave later on in the week/end).The iPhone unlocking community, however, has been sucked dry of a simple unlock for iPhone firmware version 1.1.2 (the current version). I am attributing the lack of unlock availability to the hackers beginning to make economic sense of their work. As of this writing on November 22, 2007, unlocked iPhones are selling on eBay for about $100 over retail price. Seeing as to how the iPhone unlockers are first and foremost people who need to put food on the table (and all those testing iPhones don’t come free, you know?), they might be more inclined to buy a bunch of these iPhones, unlock them themselves, and sell the unlocked product for a profit. Sure, they would love to provide the rest of us with a simple and easy set of tools and instructions for iPhone unlocking, but not when they can make some money from their hard work. Is it wrong? In one word: no. In two words: heck no.While on the topic of right and wrong, here’s a mini-rant: it’s ridiculous enough that Apple has tied their phone to one carrier and is gauging the consumer for as much as a downpayment on a car for an unlocked version. The hackers (and the consumers) have every right to stick it to Apple by unlocking their phones and have them receive no recurring revenues from partnerships Apple made with the carriers. Sure, Apple is a business and they currently have a unique, top-tier product. But what will happen to those new 5-year contracts with the cell carriers when other hardware competitors announce similar phones? Heard of RIM’s announcement of late? No? How about that of Nokia? Of course, Apple is the innovator here and as always, pushes the innovation envelope. But when this innovation limits their potential market because of price (or is it snobbishness?), it’s just bad business. Not only does Apple run the risk of simply not being considered an option for a potential purchase next time, it’s also being challenged by such project as Google’s Android. What’s that, you ask? Well, if you’ve been under water or in an airplane with no internet access for the last two weeks, you wouldn’t know that Google has recently announced a plan to provide an open mobile O.S. for many different handsets. Perhaps the key word here is open. This means that anybody, anywhere can develop for the Android system. It also makes the hardware manufacturers competitive, providing incentives to bring their devices to market at a lower cost to the consumer.In an unexpected turn of events, however, we could be faced with completely opposite outcomes come next year. Why? Well, when other device manufacturers (like the ones mentioned above as well as those who partnered with Google to roll out the Android platform on their hardware – namely HTC) release their products, they might want to strike similar types of deals with the carriers that Apple has struck. For example, they might request a subscriber revenue-sharing model and then, for better or for worse of the market, lock their own devices to the network for exclusivity purposes. This won’t be good for the consumer in the short run. In the long run, however, it might not be so bad. Let me just throw this out here and see what you all think: as our needs evolve, our technology choices will become more specified to what we want to do. One of the types of devices that we depend most on, and we expect flawless reliability from, are our mobile communicators. To ensure this reliability, manufacturers will lock them down to the carrier and perhaps the carriers will evolve from being a simple utility to a life-style choice. This would be difficult to accomplish from the carriers’ side, but no so difficult from that of the hardware manufacturers.

In the Future:

In any way, there will come a time when Apple’s JesusPhone iPhone is faced with stiff competition. At that time, Apple better have its phone available to as many consumers as possible and make the entry to purchasing this phone as easy as they can. When will that be? I’m thinking in about a year, maybe two. This will give Apple enough time to make a second and possibly a third iteration of the phone (and maybe even make a few model lines) and add the needed features that the current version is missing (3G, Flash support, official 3rd-party apps). As for the competition, they will be on their first-generation products but will most likely be within reach of many more consumers because of their lower prices and not being locked to one carrier. And in any way this plays out, the end user is always the one to benefit. Don’t you love competition? I do.

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