Inside the iPhone Gray Market

Peter Burrows, reporting for BusinessWeek on the iPhone gray market:

The boom is being fueled not just by short supply of a hot product, but also by scant evidence of interference from Apple or its partners. Apple-authorized partners — AT&T, O2, Orange, and Deutsche Telekom’s (DT) T-Mobile — lose hundreds of dollars in monthly fees when subscribers forgo a two-year contract in favor of unlocking. But the bulk of the unlocking seems to be occurring in places where customers have no authorized carrier to choose from.

★ Tuesday, 12 February 2008