First, these are no publicly available numbers of how many unlocked iPhones T-Mobile actually sold, so "getting on the Apple boards to check out the threads from all the people that bought the €999 unlocked from T-Mobile, only to find Apple dragging their feet to actually unlock the thing" is not and accurate indicator of anything.
The TurboSIM solution being "completely sold out", as you put it, is not an indicator of the true demand for unlocked iPhones. Perhaps where you live it is, but certainly not worldwide.
I never said the demand wasn't there; I said the demand probably wasn't as high as many people - such as yourself - would assume. If it were, Apple would have sold far fewer iPhones in the US, France, Germany and the UK than they have to date.
-In every single promo item released so far regarding the iPhone, Visual Voice Mail is touted as a key feature of the iPhone. Apple itself says that Visual Voice Mail is a key feature. Just because YOU don't see it as a key feature doesn't mean that it's not one.
-There was only ONE single carrier (Debitel, an MVNO who buys time from all of the major D-network carriers) offering the €600 rebate to those who purchased the unlocked iPhone from T-Mobile, and in their calling plan literature they clearly stated that Visual Voice Mail was NOT supported.
-The rebate - like the Vodafone sponsored court injunction that provoked the temporary €600 price hike in the first place, an injunction that was reversed less than one week later by the German courts- was nothing more than a publicity stunt devised by a T-Mobile competitor who regretted not getting the iPhone contract, at least that's how the German tech media saw it.
There is nothing to stop other manufacturers from implementing Visual Voice Mail or other such features of their own into their phones. In fact, Apple and it's partners weren't even the first to implement VVM; it's a technology that's been around for quite some time, but as usual it takes a company like Apple to make a workable solution out of it, so the stagnation argument is IMO bogus. You can't seriously blame Apple for the laziness and incompetence of the mobile phone industry as a whole.
My dear boy,
in France the Orange iphone Sale, as far as french friends told me, was a real flop.. you could find more iphones than the people asked for! meanwhile the government obliged Orange and aple to sell phones without any locking system. the price was very high, even compared to other phones or PDAs, 1000euro (the same price like in germany, in the opinion of experts a too high price!). In germany the sale was not so high like expected.. pleople are not stupid, you know?
But i'll tell you something: for people it's ok to renew a contract for a new phone, as far as the prices are acceptable, but when they notice that apple is just playing like microsoft with them (trying to eliminate any kind of competition and chaining them to extreme expensive contracts, like windows and office), then the image loss will be much more important, than the 600dollars or euros they would earn! then it's over with hype or sales!
Second: the european union will surely open an inquiry over that kind of contracts, because of competition and open markets, the chapter in germany was only one step this way.
Third: i guess in germany and france there are more iphones from the usa or cracked than original with Deutsche Telekom and Orange France Contracts!!!
Fourth: opensource or at least free of at&t (orange or D-T)contracts bring more applications to the iphone and more people to use it, many people don't want to be chained to a company and not to get things that other phones have already.. waiting for highly announced firmwares or minor patchwares!
You are making a lot of noise about google earth and triangulation for it, but all this technology functions only in plane surface and only in cities because of the distance to each other (otherwise the mistake rate is too high!), but does this phone have tomtom or something similar? i guess not!
or does it have any highspeed transmission that deserves such a name???
Europe has it all over.. before you change the company for calling, you have to pass national borders.. and even like that you have the same standarts and don't need to close any communication!! and thanks to the EU we are getting all lower costs using foreign european company networks! so far european phone network and system is much better than yours! and what Debitel VVMail: from the court injuction to that offer, it was impossible to create the ability to such a function.. but are you sure to have it when you go from germany to spain or france??? how does apple be able of to provide that function all over, when the phones are only been sold in a couple of contries????
Joe_c