There’s developing news in T-Mobile’s spat with Vodafone in Germany, after the latter won a court injunction to prevent T-Mobile from selling the iPhone on an exclusive contract there. T-Mobile has now announced that it will also now sell an unlocked version of the iPhone, but at a price.
How much? It’ll set you back a whopping 999 Euros. That’s about £720! Although for Brits who really really want an iPhone on an operator other than O2, it might be a price worth swallowing (plus travel costs to go and get one, of course). T-Mobile will continue selling the iPhone for 399 Euros (£287).
It’s the implications elsewhere in the world (and specifically the UK) that I’m interested in, though. It’s unclear if this kind of legal challenge could be mounted in the UK, due to differing trade laws, but with the principle of selling a legally unlocked iPhone established elsewhere in Europe, Apple may come under pressure to follow suit here and in the US too.
(via MobileCrunch)
Apple has been trying to protect the iPhone from being unlocked ever since it was released earlier this year in the Untied States. The media has followed attempts by people to unlock the phone to free owners from a lengthy contract with AT&T. Now that an unlocked version is being sold in Europe to comply with a court order, the future of the iPhone’s exclusive carrier contract is in doubt in the United States.
There is no court injunction to keep enterprising Germans from buying unlocked iPhones and selling them to Americans. Unlocked versions of the phone have already been sold on Internet sites. Now a flood of sales may come out of Europe. If buyers are willing to pay extra to keep from signing with AT&T, now there is little to stop them.
It will be interesting to see if T-Mobile’s unsubsidized price of 999 euros will be challenged or not. This is over twice the asking price for the subsidized price of 399 euros. It is conceivable that a rival company will argue that the unlocked price is set too high, and is an attempt to get around the court injunction.
All this is taking place just before Apple is scheduled to open the Asian market to the iPhone. Laws are different there but Apple can’t be happy with the German court. Now that the iPhone lock has been picked by legal means, it will be harder to keep it locked in other markets. It will be interesting to see if the exclusivity of the iPhone remains, or if the whole thing unravels from European legal rumblings.
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About Stuart Dredge
To be honest I don’t know who would want to buy the device unlocked over here. Unlimited data tariffs are pretty far behind in Germany and at the moment and T-Mobile’s iPhone contracts are head and shoulders above the competition in terms of price.
It’s not like in the UK where there is a truly competative and varied array of network options to choose from. Having said that I think Vodafone will be slashing their prices in that department soon just to stay in the game so we will see.