iPhone unlocking explodes despite Apple's countermeasures

There's no doubt that Apple has taken iPhone unlocking very seriously in the first six months of its life on the planet. Even so, it appears despite significant roadblocks, the unlockers are winning.

Each of the three times Apple and AT&T have reported their iPhone numbers since July, there has been a gap between the number of iPhones sold by Apple and the number of iPhones activated for AT&T's network. During the first weekend of iPhone sales, the gap was 124,000 units. At the end of the third quarter of the calendar year, it had grown to 300,000 iPhones. And last week, Apple and AT&T revealed that gap had increased five times over in the fourth quarter, to 1.7 million units.