AT&T's upfront iPhone 3G leaves door open for hackers
AT&T's plans to sell the iPhone 3G outright will spoil Apple's efforts to kill off the grey market in hacked imported iPhones.
When Apple announced the new iPhone it also announced plans to ensure that owners didn't leave the store without signing up for a contract with a telco. This would mean that buying iPhones and shipping them to other countries would no longer be financially viable.
Now AT&T has thrown a spanner in the works by announcing it will sell the 8GB iPhone 3G outright "some time in the future" for $US599. It would still be locked to AT&T, but this is of little concern as iPhone unlocking is now a one-click process.
The weak US dollar means that an outright iPhone 3G is quite attractive in other countries, where it can be easily hacked to run on a local network. Including postage, the price still works out at less than $AU650. Depending on what the various Aussie telcos intend to charge for the iPhone 3G, an imported model could turn out to be quite a bargain.
I read another interesting idea this week in the comments on an LA Times blog;
"Buy the 8 gig at $199, keep the contract for longer than 30 days, then cancel, pay the $175 to terminate your contract. For some reason, if you cancel before 30 days, you have to return the equipment or pay like $800 (exaggeration) for it, trust me, I know. But, after 30 days, you're essentially terminating your contract. $199+$175=$374 for your very own iPhone, free and clear of all contracts."
It looks like this is correct, going by this old post at TUAW. Of course it's a lot more messing around, because you need a friend in the US who is not only prepared to buy the phones for you and post them, but to also go through the hassle of signing up with AT&T and then breaking the contract.
Still, for the money you've saved you can slip your friend 50 bucks for their trouble. Everybody wins. Well, except for AT&T. And Apple. And the Australia telco who lost a sale. Still, if Apple sticks to Jobs' promises of global pricing parity it should have nothing to worry about.
There's already around 50,000 to 60,000 first generation iPhones in this country, hacked to work on Australian phone networks. Many of these iPhone owners will be using SIM cards locked into contracts, so they're not likely to upgrade to an Australian iPhone 3G until that contract expires - especially if they want to keep their number. If local telcos get greedy with their pricing, Australia's first-gen iPhone owners will return to the grey market and import an iPhone 3G as well.
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