Ever since Apple announced earlier this month that it has sold four million iPhones, people have been trying to work out why there’s such a big gap between that and the sales figures announced by its operator partners. US operator AT&T says it’s activated two million iPhones, while it’s thought that O2, T-Mobile and Orange between them (in respectively the UK, Germany and France) haven’t shifted more than 340,000.
Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi has been doing some digging, and reckons that a million iPhones have been unlocked to work on other operators - representing 27% of total sales. Meanwhile, he reckons that Apple stands to lose over £250 million in revenues if the trend continues - this is based on the revenue operators pay Apple, and its target of 10 million US iPhone sales by the end of 2008.
This is all based on guesswork, of course, but it shows that in the US at least, iPhone-unlocking has gone beyond the province of a few geeks. It’s not great for Apple, but is far worse news for its operator partners. I wonder how many of us Europeans have unlocked iPhones…
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