Apple's resistance to people tinkering with the iPhone (and other assorted Apple products) has not gone unnoticed. While they haven't expressly condemned such actions, they have obviously discouraged it and make no bones that unlockers take a risk. That said, some recent information from Apple may indicate that their policies might change as time goes on.
In a follow up to what we heard yesterday about the iPhone selling extremely well, Apple also released some information regarding the percentage of people buying the iPhone with the intention of unlocking it. It seems that a fifth or more of all iPhone users are buying these units with the hope or intention of modifying it. They also indicate that those modders were more likely to experiment once they decided to drop the price of the phone:
"Some number of these were sold to people that have an intention to unlock and where we don't know precisely how many people are doing that, our current guess is there is probably 250,000 of the 1.4 million that we sold where people had bought them with the intention of doing that. Many of those happened after the price cut."
If it was a mere drop in the bucket, I could understand Apple maintaining their current stance towards unlocking and modifying. However, with the recent decision in France forcing unlocked phones to be sold and the number of people wanting such being a significant portion of demand, it seems only logical that Apple will be forced to come around.
This is only speculation, but the numbers add up to it making a lot of sense. Might Apple make unlocking a safe and viable option for all their iPhone customers?