While there is little disputing the consumer popularity gathered by Apple’s iPhone since its official retail release at the end of June, the degree of popularity associated with accepting AT&T as the handset’s sole U.S. carrier is not quite so fevered, according to a San Jose Mercury Times report.
epa01051643 Apple Inc. offers that around 250,000 of the 1.4 million iPhones sold since its retail launch in June have been unlocked. EPA/JUSTIN LANE
Specifically, while the diminutively iconic iPhone continues to enjoy firm retail standing with an impressive 1.4 million units sold since June 29, Apple Inc.’s chief operating officer, Tim Cook, has offered that around 1 in every 6 of those consumers opting for the iPhone are actively seeking hacked alternatives to the compulsory AT&T network.
"Where we don’t know precisely how many people are doing that [unlocking the iPhone], our current guess is there were probably 250,000 of the 1.4 million that we sold where people had bought them with the intention of doing that," Cook outlined during a conference call with analysts and investors this past Monday.
And, interestingly, Bloomberg reports that Texas-based telecommnunications provider AT&T held a similar conference call on Tuesday, during which it revealed that only 1.1 million iPhones had been activiated through its network since the handset hit retail, which would perhaps indicate that more like 300,000 iPhone users have purchased with a view to seeking a different network solution.
Unsurprisingly, considering its profile and positioning, members of the hacker community have already issued numerous solutions for those iPhone owners looking to ‘unlock’ their devices so they can be carried outside of AT&T on other networks, such as T-Mobile.
Cook did not disclose if or how Apple would address the current high rate of unlocked iPhones. However, the recent 1.1.1 iPhone software update issued by Apple did manage to temporarily place a speed bump before hackers, disabling certain exclusive features and rendering some unlocked handsets completely unusable following its download.
Further updates could serve to deliver similar effects to unlocked phones, although California-based Apple insists that it is not actively seeking to "brick" iPhones via its updates – though it has warned affected users that any incurred hardware crippling will not be covered by the device’s warranty.
And it is certainly possible that further software updates designed to trip-up hackers could well arrive in the immediate future, not least because hackers sidestepped 1.1.1 fairly quickly with code that disabled the hack while downloading the update, and then turned it on again when finished.
The other major contributing factor is, of course, money. While AT&T does not receive any service fees from those iPhone users looking elsewhere for their network needs, Apple also loses out as its exclusivity deal with AT&T includes the gathering of a percentage of the carrier’s iPhone service revenue. That exclusivity deal also exists with recently confirmed European carriers ahead of the iPhone’s release outside of the U.S., and will likely lead to further financial damage as similarly inclined iPhone consumers in France, Germany, and the U.K. seek to unlock their handsets.
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