After the news yesterday that Vodafone had won a court injunction against Deutsch Telekom, the parent company of T-Mobile, against selling the iPhone tied to their network and with a 2 year contract, T-Mobile has announced that they plan to sell unlocked iPhone to German customers, however for a huge premium, it will set you back by around €999 ($1500) and a locked iPhone for €399.
So if you do the simple math, the premium for the unlocked iPhone is €600, which seems to be close to the estimates making the rounds in the blogosphere as to the amount going into Apple's kitty for each iPhone sold. But in my opinion the way Apple's exclusive carrier partners pay Apple a monthly fee for each iPhone activate on their network, I am quite sure they are smart enough to take a cut from Apple for an unlocked iPhone sold in their stores.
If you were thinking that this would mean the end of the iPhone hacking community think again as the premium on most unlocked iPhones that you see available on eBay is mostly in the range of €100 to €200 or if you are one of those technically inclined then you can do it for free thanks to the iPhone hacking gurus.
Hi All,
With an unlocked phone on the market from Germany.
How will Apple deal with firmware updates?
How will they tell the difference?
You can't that's the problem…If you have an unlocked phone with prepaid AT&T chip loaded with to the max with 3rd party apps after about a week the phone will stop billing you…
I love my prepaid….