Gizmodo: sim unlock

All Those Unlocked iPhones May Be Costing Apple $300 Million

Jason Chen — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 17:00:08 EST

Both Fortune and Marketwatch are saying that all the unlocked iPhones, which make up about a third of the total phones sold, may be costing Apple $300 million in future revenue kickbacks from cellphone providers. And if Apple doesn't stop the unlocking madness, what's the incentive for a provider to pony up that revenue sharing in the first place? [Fortune and Marketwatch - Thanks David!]

A Third of iPhones are SIM Unlocked, Guesstimates Say

Jason Chen — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 15:30:16 EST

According to estimates based on carrier's numbers, only 2/3 of iPhones are "legally" activated, which means 1/3 of all iPhones sold are SIM unlocked and being used sans carrier contract. Here's how they arrived at this number.

First, AT&T put out a press release saying that 2 million iPhones were subscribed on their service by the end of 2007. The three European carriers with iPhones (O2, Orange and T-Mobile) don't have official numbers, but iLounge rates them at about 300-400k, which means the total is only around 2.4 million. This, with Apple's announcement that 3.7 million iPhones were sold in 2007, makes put the number at about 1/3 of all iPhones being unlocked.

Even if the European iPhone numbers are low and AT&T customers haven't activated their Christmas phones yet, that still puts unlocked iPhone numbers somewhere around 1/3 to 1/4, which is extremely high by any count. [iLounge - Thanks David!]

iPhone Dev Team Releases Open Source Unlock Software

Jason Chen — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 16:00:45 EST

As we told you last Wednesday, the iPhone Dev Team have opened up the source to AnySIM, the free SIM unlock software for the iPhone that lets you use your phone on pretty much any GSM network in the world. The source being open, on the other hand, makes it a lot easier for Apple to see what kind of vulnerabilities there are in their code so they can patch it up quicker for the next firmware release. [Goole Code]