Earlier today we posted a story on how to sell unlocked phones, and since then an interesting question has appeared: Could Apple's iPhone 3GS succeed as an unlocked phone?
For at least a year before the iPhone was introduced, everyone bashed unlocked phones for offering EDGE only networking, including us. Why on earth wouldn't the manufacturers offer U.S. 3G support? We all considered phones to be useless without U.S. 3G networking capabilities.
And then the Apple iPhone came along with EDGE networking, and everybody was skeptical at best. How would it be possible for a phone to succeed with EDGE only networking? We for sure didn't believe that was possible. It succeeded nonetheless, and Apple has faced uphill battles ever since the announcement day.
In our opinion, the iPhone success didn't come thanks to carrier subsidies though, and we doubt unlocked phones have failed to deliver good sales numbers due to the lack of subsidies. We think the ability to create trends play a vital role here. If people first get attracted to a specific phone, they'll get it eventually anyway.
However, seeing the iPhone on more carriers have been important to the success abroad, so people can stick to their "own carrier". We think the same effect would appear in the U.S. when the AT&T exclusivity ends.
The fact that there are two large carriers using CDMA networks and two large GSM carriers are using different 3G bands narrow down the "Unlocked potential" quite a bit though, but that's an issue caused by the mobile industry, not by consumers.
We can't blame consumers for problems that the mobile industry has caused. In that regard we think the iPod touch is a great choice for both people that can't pay for a data plan on AT&T as well as the many that want or have to stay with other carriers. And quite a few consumers have taken that path as well.
But in the long run, it would clearly be in consumers interest to see the mobile industry solving the "network mess" we're currently seeing. We'll simply soon be talking 2010 and there are four large, incompatible data networks in the market.
Multi-mode chipsets are obviously the only solution, so we'll just have to wait and see if American consumers will ever get to use phones that are actually capable of pulling off the unlocked concept for real.
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