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February 24, 2008
Apple: Why iPhone Unlocking is Growing Every Day
While many of my readers are technology sorts, more of my readers are from the financial side of things. As a result, while they know the words "unlocking iPhone", and they know it is becoming an issue for Apple, it is something of an abstract notion.
Let's make it concrete. Point-and-click tools have made iPhone unlocking a straightforward and relatively trouble-free issue, turning something complex, time-consuming and fraught with opportunities to "brick" your iPhone into something only marginally more complex than running an antivirus update.
Consider the following GUI overlay for one popular unlock tool:
Anyone still wondering why unlocked iPhone numbers are almost certainly bigger than Wall Street thinks?
Sphere It
| 
Digg it
| 
Bookmark it
| 
Stumble it
| 
Facebook it
Interesting. What was your OOTB firmware release? I have heard from oodles -- maybe oodles^3 -- people for whom this was speedy and bulletproof.
I was at 1.1.3 (4A93) before & after the jailbreak attempt.
There are a few unanswered questions about 'error 1' on the ZiPhone blog, so I am definitely not the only one who saw that. My guess is that the ZiPhone hack would work for new iPhones that aren't currently authorized, or existing phones that aren't yet at 1.1.3.
That is probably a *large* group, so empirical numbers of success would indeed be high.
While the number of unlocked iPhones is certainly a concern, I think this issue has become more than a bit overblown. This is a short-term issue that is easily fixable for Apple. If they want to fix it immediately, they can raise the price of the iPhone by $200 and offer that back in the form of a rebate upon activation. That should remove the bulk of any gross margin difference between unlocked and activated handsets. I can't imagine that this solution hasn't occurred to Apple.
I think the iPhone premium comes back if this along with a 3G version is announced by the summer.
Hey Paul,
You already know that I previously jailbreaked my iPhone, but lost that w/ the latest firmware (as did everyone else)
ZiPhone looked interesting so I tried it. It failed. I twittered the process, which I'll repeat here so it gets so of your googlejuice:
jbminn fortunately for me, the iTunes restore process seems to have worked flawlessly. Files from the backup loaded & the phone itself still works
jbminn jailbreak was a failure. ziphone forced the iPhone into recovery mode, which it did, but ziphone never came back. failed w/ 'error 1'.
jbminn iPhone restored & restarting, now connecting to iTunes for reactivation. Activated. Now restoring from last backup.
jbminn using ZiPhone to jailbreak... 1st attempt failed w/ 'unknown error'... um, right. Jailbreak requires a restore & that's running right now