Apple today started to sell unlocked iPhone 4 in United States, thus ending a 4 year long stretch of locked phones in its biggest market. Apple announced the iOS 5 and iCloud at WWDC earlier this month, but didn’t announce a new iPhone as it did for the past 4 years. While the iPhone 4 is expected to go on sale by September, Apple has now thrown in another iPhone 4 variant in the US market. Earlier this year, Apple started to sell CDMA iPhone 4 with Verizon in US ending AT&T’s monopoly and with unlocked GSM iPhone 4 going in sale, the biggest loser here is again AT&T.
The consumers however have limited choice. Apple has only made the wnlocked GSM version of iPhone 4 available in US, which supports only AT&T standards for 3G. Consumers looking to shift carriers to the only other major 3G player, T-mobile would have to sacrifice a lot here. This puzzles us. There is little value that Apple is adding here, but if this trend continues, the iPhone 5 might well make it to US in unlocked state. For now international travelers would see some value in an unlocked iPhone 4, enabling them to switch to local SIMs when roaming internationally.
At $649 for 16GB and $749 for 32GB, the iPhone 4 unlocked is cheaper than the UK and India rates and more comparable to its pricing in HK and Singapore.
For Indians looking to get a cheaper iPhone 4, US just opened up as another source 🙂
