p2pnet news | Mobiles:- Back in October, “More than a quarter of a million people have so far bought iPhones —- and promptly unlocked them,” p2pnet posted.

That was in the States, and now, “Mobile phone company Orange has said 20% of customers who have bought iPhones from it in France have opted for unlocked ones,” says the BBC.

Interesting word, ‘opted’.

In the US, DRM King Steve Jobs forces people who buy his phones to subscribe to AT&T, and to register with his user-funded iPod front-end, iTunes. Anyone who decides they didn’t want any of that has to resort to ‘illegal’ alternatives.

And in Europe, in countries other than France, “mobile companies only sell iPhones to customers who take out network contracts with them,” says the story, going on that on Tuesday, a German court overturned an injunction that’d “forced T-Mobile to sell unlocked phones”.

“In the two weeks that the injunction was in place, T-Mobile sold unlocked iPhones for 999 euros, compared with 399 euros for a phone with a two-year contract,” says the story.

What does that tell you?

“The company has not revealed how many unlocked phones it sold at that price but says it did sell some.”
A surly Jobs says hacking an iPhone could render it “permanently inoperable” if software updates are downloaded.

Slashdot it!

Also See:
p2pnet – Quarter of a million unlocked iPhones!, October 24, 2007
BBC – 20% of iPhones in France unlocked, December 5, 2007

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This entry was posted on Thursday, December 6th, 2007 at 11:18 am and is filed under Mobiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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