This is all part of Apple’s plan.
Apple has been known to screw its partners over before (cough**Motorola ROKR, IBM, Adobe, Microsoft etc.) albeit privately. By not taking any actions against the new iPhone hackers and leaving the dirty work to AT&T’s legal team, Apple isn’t helping its case. Perhaps because Steve can relate to phone haxors? From a strictly mathematical point of view, let’s look at the revenues. Apple gets 10% ish of every legit iPhone’s usage revenue. Over 2 years@ $5 a month, that is $240. About the same as the margin on the iPhones according to iSupply. So about break even. However those people taking them off of AT&T are unlikely to be cannibalizing AT&T sales – they are people stuck in other contracts…all things being relatively equal besides visual voice mail, if you are plan-less in a semi urban area, you’ll go to AT&T. So it is mostly gravy. If Apple is serious about keeping the iPhone locked to AT&T, they will release a firmware update that will seal up the holes that it has allowed hackers to break throguh. Much like the PSP vs. Homebrew PSP fight, it will be a sticky situation. With 3G iPhones coming to Europe and predicted price drops in current iPhones, there is a lot of excitemnt in this market segment. And don’t forget about WiMAX in 2008!
