Your unlocked iPhone can cost you more

PUNE, INDIA: While the iPhone is still to be officially launched in India, it's already popular and up for easy pickings at grey markets in the country.

"If you let us know and place a requirement, we can arrange that for you. It would cost anywhere around Rs 22,000 or upwards," says a salesperson at an IT mall.

These pieces would come with an unlocked version while the handsets come from the US via personal route.

"One can bring in four or five handsets from foreign travel today, that is then built upon and unlocked here in India," he reveals.

The unlocking is possible but now the company is gearing up for injecting deterrents. So if you unlock it once, Apple can again lock it via a wireless route.

"If you are in a Wi-Fi zone, an SMS saying anything like a promotional scheme or a free iPhone promise can come. Once you click yes, the piece again gets locked," he adds.

This could mean the subsequent unlocking cost of Rs 2500 more.

Meanwhile, Apple is working for a legitimate entry in India, as some channel sources speculate.

"It can be either Reliance, Airtel or Idea. But Reliance can be ruled out because of the CDMA non-preference. Between Airtel and Idea, however, it won't matter what Apple finally chooses because the operator lock-in would not possibly happen in India."

As per an earlier report, IphoneUnlocking.org.uk enables successful unlock of all iPhones worldwide where iPhone owners can unlock the device with such a consummate ease in less than five minutes, with just the click of a button.

The iPhone unlock software is capable of unlocking all iPhones, from the 4GB v1.0.0 to the latest 16GB v1.1.4.

Unlocking the iPhone can allow the use of any type of GSM SIM card from all over the world.

Incidentally, 11.4 per cent of Internet searches for a specific mobile phone model were for the iPhone – based on analysis of the top 2,000 search terms that sent traffic to a Hitwise Custom Category, consisting of the top 100 online retail websites in the UK during the four weeks ending 20 October 2007.

In 2007 Apple iPhone topped the list of the Sixth Annual Most Memorable New Product Launch (MMNPL) Survey. Thirty seven per cent of consumers named the iPhone the most memorable new product launch.