I think most everybody not in vacuum these days is aware of all the hype surrounding Apple’s iPhone. It’s supposed to be the best thing since sliced bread as far as cell phones go. So much so that lots of people are taking their hard earned cash and trying to buy one. Noticed I said “trying” to buy one. As noted in this article, if you want to buy an iPhone you will need a credit card to do so. They refuse to accept cash as payment for these. Apple claims it’s to discourage people from buying them in bulk so they can resell them. See, the catch with iPhone is that you have to use it on AT&T’s cellular network. You can’t take it to any other provider and get it to work. Supposedly there is a way to unlock the phone so it could be used with other carriers and that’s why people are reselling them. A quote from this article outlines how much people wish to unlock those phones.

One million iPhones, or 27% of those sold last year,
have been adapted to work on other networks, said Bernstein Research
analyst Toni Sacconaghi.

Other carriers would love to offer this phone to their customers. Apple was counting on the revenue generated from allowing AT&T exclusive right to sell service on the phone.


Mr Sacconaghi said the high number of unlocked iPhones
in the US would be a concern for Apple, as it receives a percentage of
AT&T’s contract fees from iPhone users.

He estimates that if Apple sells 10 million iPhones in
the US by the end of 2008, but 30% of them have been unlocked to work
with other phone networks, Apple will lose $500m (£251m) in revenues.

I can see the steam coming from Steve Jobs’s head all the way from here.

In my view, what Apple should have done is work out deals with all the carriers instead of just one. Problem is that the iPhone was created in partnership with AT&T before AT&T took over Cingular. They had a hand in it right from the beginning so it was reasonable to expect that AT&T would want to reap as much as possible from it. I still think that even with AT&T in the mix, both companies could have worked out something with other carriers that could have benefited both. In fact, I think they could have benefited even more so then they do now. It’s just like Apple to try and make things exclusive only to them. You can only use their phone with one carrier and it must be paid for with a credit card. A great opportunity squandered but that’s just my opinion.