Unlocked iPhones are more prevalent than many expected
By Gregory Mone Posted 01.29.2008 at 1:42 pm 3 Comments

iPhone Free: An unlocked iPhone connected to Canada's Fido network.  Dylan Parker

A financial analyst announced yesterday that more than 25 percent of people who bought an iPhone have chosen to stay away from AT&T, and are enjoying their new gadgets through other wireless networks instead.

Nearly one million phones haven’t shown up on AT&T’s radar, which means the owners have either kept them in the box (unlikely) or opted for another way to play. Analysts have speculated that there might be a large number of unlocked phones out there, but this estimate bumps that number up by a few hundred thousand, and could affect Apple’s business model – fewer AT&T subscriptions means less money for Apple, which gets a cut of those plans. If Apple hits its sales goals for the year, but the same percentage of buyers opts to unlock, profits could be substantially lower, and Steve Jobs could lose his bid for Emperor of the Universe.—Gregory Mone

Via Reuters

3 Comments

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tzeak
02/12/08 at 1:18 pm

This iPhone is jailbroken. It doesn't mean it isn't using AT&T

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Shogun37
02/12/08 at 6:34 pm

Hey, I have no problem with someone (legally) making a great deal of money. But telling me that I can't chose the network I want, after paying through the nose for the stupid thing? Get real. Be thankful so few decided to thumb their nose.

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stevejallen
02/20/08 at 4:37 pm

Recently Apple saw it's market cap fall by a massive $70bn. What was the cause of this? The company is remarkably profitable in a notoriously low profit market. They been capturing market share from the other main players in the market and they remain dominant in the personal media player space. They were not forecasting the end of the world.

They lost market value because they forecast a softer Q1, in line with many economists' own concerns about a possible recession. This is a responsible thing for Apple to have done. So did it deserve such a pounding on Wall Street? The short answer is NO. Was Apple stock over-valued? At a P/E of 50 at the peak I would say NO. This is a professionally managed and highly respectable company deserving a P/E of 50 (remember folks that there were P/Es of 1000+ just before the crash in '01!)..

So what we are seeing is typical of a bear market. Analysts are trying to slay Goliath and talk down the stocks on the basis that they will make a whole load more money when the market bounces back. Apple is forecast to rise back to $200 per share within 1 year.

So this little story about a paltry 1m iPhones which 'might' be unlocked out there somewhere is so insignificant to Apple's overall performance that it should be ignored. It is just one of those useless bits of analyst rumor and innuendo which is used to assure that pension funds get smaller so that fat cats in the city can buy that new Ferarri....



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