Unlocked iPhones in Europe
I mean, regardless of liberal laws about locking here and favorable terms for carriers and phone manufacturers
The carriers do benefit from the long and tight contracts, no doubt. (At the expense of consumers, most of the time.)
The situation with phone manufacturers is trickier. At least Nokia says that it is easier to sell to end users than to carriers. On the other hand, Motorola is accustomed to acting in the US market. This is quite clear from the market shares inside the US vs. rest of the world.
So, some phone manufacturers benefit, others lose. The phone manufacturers as a group are not on the winning side in the bundled sales game.
(It is interesting to note that as the bundled sales in the US seem to support the US mobile phone manufacturing industry, the regulators may not be in a hurry to do any deregulation at this point.)
The idea being, the iPhones would only violate Swedish law when they were out of Swedish jurisdiction; that particular nuance might be difficult to interpret.
I do see your point there. I could not find any accurate description of "locked" or "unlocked" in the legislation. In any case, the consumer affairs are an important area of emphasis on the union (EU) level. This means Apple would at least have to do the partial locking so that the phones work with all carriers in the EU countries. And, quite inevitably, even when doing that, the consumer groups (or authorities) would sue them, probably in several EU countries.
Doing all this would mean getting a lot of bad press. I doubt Apple would be that stupid. They either play by the rules or don't play at all. I put my money on the latter option.
Even though... I would not be that surprised if unlocked iPhones would hit the shelves here at some point. Apple may still be quite confident that a vast majority of US customers will buy a bundled one in the States. Unlocked phones trickling from some remote and dark corners of some far-away land whose name no one remembers are not a real problem.
