Analysts looking at both Apple's results and those posted by AT&T - Apple's iPhone partner in the US - have noticed a large discrepancy in the figures. Apple says it has sold 3.7m iPhones in total. AT&T says it has sold 2m iPhones, and European operators are believed to have sold between 300,000 and 400,000 handsets. Which …

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Sunday 27th January 2008 09:06 GMT BatCat

2/3 of iPhones hacked....

I surveyed a representative sample*** of iPhone users in the UK and found that 2/3 of them are running a hacked handset on a network other than O2 that were bought and never activated.

Personally I'm in the 16GB iPod Touch + Nokia N95 phone camp. I'll get an iPhone as soon as the 16GB ( or preferably 32GB ), 3.5G HSDPA with video capable 5Mp autofocus camera comes out - along with a hack to run it on Vodafone. Unless the fabled blue-tooth activation hack is discovered for the iPod Touch before then, in which case I'll stick with what I have.

*** Sample was 2 work colleagues and 1 client staff member. ;o)

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Sunday 27th January 2008 09:06 GMT Chad H.

@ Dana W

Couldnt you use Boot camp or Paralells?

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Sunday 27th January 2008 09:06 GMT Chad H.

@ Alexander Hanff / flop brigade.

Alex: Thats not what the article says. The article says AT&T have SOLD 2m, not activated 2m, SOLD. Hence my call for further information on the metrics. The way the article is worded makes this key difference in choice of words very important, and leaves it open to being interpreted whatever way someone wants to bias it.

As for those of you who say its a flop, go look at the article showing the iPhone to be the most used phone on the web. The iPhone has a specific market segment (heavy mobile web users) which its hitting better than any other manufacturer.

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Sunday 27th January 2008 09:06 GMT Sol Kahn

Unlocking != Easy

Unlocking is not so easy now. The phones currently shipping have no software tool for unlocking the phone functionality ("baseband"). You can activate/jail break to get the rest of the functionality but no calls. Oh well, sending mine back.

Oh, and you don't buy a contract when you buy the phone. You buy the phone from apple and then later sign up with the phone provider via iTunes. This can be bypassed using the software work arounds.

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Monday 28th January 2008 00:40 GMT Steve Evans

@Steve Renouf

I don't think many brits are nipping over to France to get unlocked iPhones, cos I don't think many people are bothered about the iPhone at all! All the massaging of the sales figures can't hide this!

I was in an O2 shop on their launch night, I used the late opening as a chance to get some free parking and buy a microSD for my phone before going on a trip, and the O2 shop were the cheapest high street source.

It wasn't exactly busy!

Sure the iPhone looks very flash, but as a phone it is seriously lacking in features the European market has come to expect. Plus the idea of actually having to buy a phone *with* a contract is just so last century!

It's just a case of Apple not understanding the difference in market (or maybe just not caring).

However, the iPod touch is a completely different story. The UI is gorgeous (as it is on the iPhone), but the product is an mp3 player with added browsing, and it does everything very nicely. I suspect that as the iPhone is only a barely passable phone, people that like the UI will now just buy an iPod touch and stick to their free Nokia phones with real MMS messaging and good cameras.

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Monday 28th January 2008 00:40 GMT oldfartuk

Technofashion slaves....

Personally, I dont see the attraction. I use a 7 year old Nokia 3310.........its does what it says on the label, it makes phone calls when you're moving, I dont want it to do anything else........

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Monday 28th January 2008 10:14 GMT Jason Pepper

@Sol Kahn - cracking iPhone is easy..

Personally, I think the discrepancy is a combination of all of the things discussed, but definitely one of them will be phones that are not registered.

I have one I bought in the US for $400, and a Hong Kong TurboSIM clone from Ebay (£30).. so for £230 I have a working 8Gb iPhone running on any network I like.. and it was very very simple..

Downgrade to 1.1.1

Jailbreak

Upgrade to 1.1.2

Insert TurboSIM + SIM

bingo..

Seems a damm site easier to me than unlocking a BBerry..

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Monday 28th January 2008 10:14 GMT Anonymous Coward

Bash, bash, bash

As an Apple user and fan, yes fanboi if you insist. I Tend to look for the Apple stories first on El Reg. It always makes me laugh, when I read the comments page associated with the give Apple write up, it is flooded with MS bores. They all sing the same old desperate song about their hate for Apple, Hate for Steve Jobs, Hate for Fanbois........ Blah, F**king blah.

If they hate Apple so much P*ss off and read some MS related articles about how perfect vista is, how MS never suffers from Virus,worms or trojans. Maybe there is a story about how MS never crashes and how the OS is so stable. Go stand around the water cooler and discuss how the latest MS machine requires only 1 1/2 desks space to fit it all on and in, how the next laptop promises to be thicker and even less attractive that the average telephone directory.

I am fed with the MS crowd constantly finding their way in here and dragging the point away from the thread just so they can squeeze in a little Apple bashing. You don't find funbois going the MS comments pages and getting all twa**y about things.

Mind you if I had to sit and look at XP or vista all day I guess I would be miserable, surly and jealous too. Never mind You can all go to one of the increasing amount of Apple stores at the weekend and press you noses against the glass!

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Monday 28th January 2008 10:14 GMT Anonymous Coward

how dare you

Excuse me Register, but why are you always so negative about Apple. Everyone knows Apple an dits products are super special awesome.

Here, in the Apple Brotherhood, we refer to your journalists as RP's (Repressive Personalities).

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Monday 28th January 2008 10:33 GMT Ascylto

Amabovvered?

My iPhone suits me perfectly. It does what I what it to do ... elegantly and simply, just as a phone for me should do.

With one exception ... o2 ... whose coverage in many areas is just plain cr*p.

Apple got it badly wrong. They didn't do their market research properly to discover what any phone user in the UK could have told them ... we DON'T like expensive phones with expensive contracts. we're just not used to them.

That's why Apple's Americans have been over here wondering why the US model didn't work in the UK. They probably paid a lot of dollars to a market research company to come up with conclusions which were WRONG.

When I tell people that the US Americans pay for incoming and outgoing calls they are amazed. Rightly!

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Monday 28th January 2008 11:42 GMT Anonymous Coward

i smell

corporate bullsh!t

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Monday 28th January 2008 11:49 GMT Dr Patrick J R Harkin

@Ascylto

"When I tell people that the US Americans pay for incoming and outgoing calls they are amazed. Rightly!"

May not still be the case, but when I was in Denmark some years ago I learned that you pay from the second you pick up the handset, not the second you're connected. You're using the line, so you pay for it!

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Monday 28th January 2008 13:13 GMT Shakje

Re: Bash, bash, bash

"Mind you if I had to sit and look at XP or vista all day I guess I would be miserable, surly and jealous too. Never mind You can all go to one of the increasing amount of Apple stores at the weekend and press you noses against the glass!"

No. I'd try to move and find they'd stolen my jacket and replaced it with a lump of white plastic.

@Dana

There are actually many uses for Windows PCs. We code for them almost exclusively, because our clients like Windows Server, and also because it's a lot easier to use Windows code in C++ etc. than having to learn smalltalk. Third party APIs we use are Windows only, so our choice of platform is severely limited. While I am, in fact, a Windows "fanboi", I appreciate that you get what you want and need. Personally, I enjoy gaming (the non-Sam and Max type), and if you tried some of the popular PC games you might find you like them. I occasionally play WoW (although I can actually seperate it from my life, and don't NEED to play it) and it IS fun, whatever your inherent views.

It is a fact that gaming on the Mac is pretty limited, it has improved, but it's still awful, and the main reason is DirectX. I don't know about anyone else here, but I do enjoy coding DirectX apps. On top of this, converting apps written in C/C++ code written for consoles is a lot easier to transpose to c++ code in a Windows environment than SmallTalk. Just my experience anyway.

Since I'm a Windows coder, and a decent Windows coder at that, I use VS2005.

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Monday 28th January 2008 14:27 GMT Law

@ Dana

Fan-girl reaction aside, your headline is one I would love to see in any publication!! ;)

El Reg - please, for the love of all that is unholy - you must use this title in the next headline about Apple's evil ways!

Gawd bless El Reg, for you are the bastion of sarcastic reporting I have come to know and love. I pledge my allegience to you now and forever!!

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Monday 28th January 2008 15:22 GMT Daniel B.

re: bash, bash, bash

... And thanks, Paul, for reinforcing the idea that Apple fanbois think that non-Apple users are all MS users/fanbois. Mind you, I have used Macs since the Mac Plus, System Software 5, HyperCard 1.2... We old school Mac users actually think that Apple has lost its way. Which is why my last Mac is a pre-iMac Performa... Which has survived at least 4 PC's and 3 laptops.

I currently use Linux, as that's what covers most of my needs. The only use for my winXP install is tor Starcraft, and Blackberry syncing :)

Oh yes, the same BB 8300 that I'm using to post this comment while stuck in Mexico City's traffic. OTOH, my coworker's iPhone's useless and collecting dust, he hasn't cracked it for fear of bricking it (and stuck with the no-software-unlock firmware.)

Guess who's enjoying more... ;)

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Monday 28th January 2008 19:54 GMT Alex Rose

@elder norm and all the other fanboys

A large number of people on here are claiming NOT to be fanboys. Then ruining it by referencing MS (Dana) and Vista (you). That immediately shows you are a fanboy as you i. bother to defend your product choice in the first place, only fanboys are that insecure ii. feel the need to reference MS product rather than simply defending your own choice, only a fanboy would feel the need to defend their own choice by rubbishing someone else and iii. most importantly you immediately assume that people who don't like Apple must be using MS, there are other choices out there and you all look particularly silly in defending your choice of a PHONE by rubbishing other peoples (supposed) choice of an OS.

Fanboys in all camps please f*ck off and die.

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Tuesday 29th January 2008 00:16 GMT Anonymous Coward

Oh Hell

Well this is all very nice - the same old Tried argument. The story itself was not bashing Apple really it was reporting possible problems with the sales of iPhones. Does it really matter? You folks with your unlocked phones are ripping Apple off so your not good customers, and so one day they might release a patch and brick your phones................

The Reg bashes everyone so forget the old bull about "you love M$" read some more stuff and acquire a life guys.

I don’t own an iPhone; it does not do what I need it to do. 3G is missing, a good camera (+4 MP), picture messaging etc. etc. But I can see the attraction.

At least it looks good.

It’s the extreme reaction that some of you Apple people give to these stories. You all look daft. Take the fire wall being switched off on the OS after the upgrade. My local Apple man told me that "anyone who doesn’t check to make sure their firewall is not on is stupid. They are the kind of people who drive with no breaks in a car."

That’s fine for all the nice IT professionals out there but I am an ordinary user and I expect it to work. You can bang on about M$ not working but I didn't change from Windows 98 till XP Service pack 2 and I may well wait till Pack 3 (the way this new bag is going).

The only gripe I have with Apple is that iTunes is not an upgrade unless I have it already. So why oh why does the Apple upgrade tool insist on try to install it every time it checks for a quick time upgrade. Yeah its only a tick to remove and not install but why have it ticked...............

(Oh and I have heard the old gag about "well it is an upgrade if you don’t have it, cause its an upgrade from media player yak yak yak" its tired give it a rest...........................)

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Tuesday 29th January 2008 06:13 GMT Dana W

you get it!

"Fan-girl reaction aside, your headline is one I would love to see in any publication!! ;)"

Congrats for being the only person to read enough to realize I was making a JOKE!

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Tuesday 29th January 2008 08:35 GMT Dana W

@Alex Rose

"A large number of people on here are claiming NOT to be fanboys. Then ruining it by referencing MS (Dana) and Vista"

So you are saying If I say Microsoft Vista Sucks, than I am a Mac Fangirl. Then a lot of Linux users are Mac Fanboys too.

How Many people who are Microsoft FANS like Vista?

I like that despite claiming repeatedly to a mixed OSX/Linux household I'm a blind APPLE fangirl. :)

See Logic, spurious.

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Tuesday 29th January 2008 14:40 GMT Anonymous Coward

iPhone in France

Actually, the iPhone is not unlocked in France, and has an exclusive contract with Orange. Let me summarise this is a chart to show the difference between UK, US, France and Germany:

UK - O2 exclusive - 18 month contract (http://www.apple.com/uk/iphone/easysetup/rateplans.html)

US - AT&T exclusive - 24 month contract

(http://www.apple.com/iphone/easysetup/rateplans.html)

FR - Orange exclusive - 24 month contract

(http://www.apple.com/fr/iphone/easysetup/rateplans.html)

DE - T-Mobile exclusive - 24 month contract

(http://www.apple.com/de/iphone/easysetup/rateplans.html)

Well looks like the people of the UK get the best deal on the iPhone !!

Dig a little deeper into the contract details, and well, looks even sweeter fo UK consumers.

Two of my friends have the iPhone now, and I must say they are VERY happy with it. I would love one, but am tied into a contract with my current phone with Vodafone.

Like everyone else, I'm very unhappy that the iPhone is stuck to O2, and probably the single biggest reason (even more so than the cost) that the iPhone has not achieved anywhere near as high levels of unit SALES as the N95. Cmon Apple - this is a Global marketplace you are playing in - unlock the iPhone and allow its use across any network.

Seriously, I have read so may rumours about the "Version 2" of iPhone, and well, who knows.... all I know is that as soon as it comes, I will be first in line for it whatever network it's on !

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