Are 10% Of iPhones Sold To Unlockers?
from the are-10%-now-bricked? dept
Analysts from investment bank Piper Jaffray are making some news today after releasing a report claiming that 10% of iPhones are actually being sold to groups that are unlocking them and reselling them. They seem to be basing this on the fact that there are a bunch of folks going in and buying the maximum single allotment of 5 iPhones at a time. If this is true, the actual number of unlocked iPhones could actually be significantly higher, as many unlockers are buying the phone and unlocking it themselves. On the flip side, there could be other explanations for people buying 5 iPhones rather than to resell them unlocked. Either way, it should be clear that there's a fair amount of demand for unlocked iPhones, which again raises the question of why Steve Jobs ever agreed to an exclusive with AT&T.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
iPhone purchase price in Chicago (w/tax): $450
iPhone sale price in Moscow, Russia: $800
Roundtrip ticket Chicago Moscow: $600
Profit: ($800 - $450) * 5 - $600 = $1150
Do I really have to explain any further?
P.S. Interestingly enough, there has NEVER been "unlocking" problem in Russia since, like, day 2. They give you a special SIM card ($15), you insert it, bam, unlocked...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
2. ???
3. Profit
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Open Phones are CRAVED.
Jobs can keep this game up but he will not win. The iPhone form factor will be cloned and soon. At that point OpenMoko or QTopia will be modded to give the iPhone software look and feel to the iPhone Clones.
Business plans, like the Apple/AT&T one, that are based upon "Customer Lock-In" are fundamentally immoral as they are grounded in coersion and start your customer relationship off with a big dose of hostility.
Only the greedy refuse to give customers what they want at a fair price.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Yeah, thats the ticket...open source UIs
Yeah, thats why those Linux UIs that are modded to give the OSX look and feel have pushed Linux past real OS X on the desktop.
Jobs may not win, but its hardly going to be some open source Linux UI project on a clone that is going to beat the iPhone. Keep dreaming, though!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The Ipig in a poke
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The guys behind OpenMoko are smart. Their phones are not locked. They're making openness the selling point and you have developers developing applications on the OpenMoko platform.
The group behind OpenMoko(FIC)'s strategy of openness and willingness to support 3rd party developers may make them the iphone killer, not the ability to clone the look and feel of iphone.
In short, they're going to be the one who do it right.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Apple gets a cut
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Apple
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
> 2. ???
> 3. Profit
I dunno about you, but $230 in my pocket tell me that I've got my #2 right. :-b
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]