IPhone exclusivity saga continues: T-Mobile can sell locked device in Germany

A German court has given T-Mobile the go-ahead to lock its German iPhones and require purchasers to buy a two-year contract, nixing a court challenge from rival Vodafone Group plc, according to media reports.
In a public relations gesture, T-Mobile said it would unlock the devices after subscribers had fulfilled their two-year commitment. Of course, in two years, the device is likely to have been superseded by new Apple Inc. models, presumably with W-CDMA connectivity or better that improves over its current EDGE network connection.
The decision came less than a month after the iPhone went on sale in Germany and the United Kingdom, where O2 plc is selling a locked device with contract. Vodafone has said it won’t challenge the U.K. arrangement because, based on existing law, it does not have a case.
The issue of locking and unlocking is prominent in Europe, where network operators control less of the handset retail channel than in the United States.
In France, for instance, where the iPhone went on sale Nov. 29, law requires operator Orange to sell unlocked iPhones in addition to those it sells locked with service contracts. Orange is selling the unlocked devices at a seemingly prohibitive premium. T-Mobile had adopted a similar stance while it was under court injunction to sell unlocked devices during Vodafone’s legal challenge.
In the U.S., the iPhone is available exclusively at AT&T Mobility, which sells the device locked with a two-year contract. The arrangement has proved to be a mild headache for the operator, as some 250,000 iPhones out of about 1.4 million sold since June 29 have not been registered for service with the American operator. Presumably those units were unlocked using procedures that have proliferated over the Internet, though many were rendered useless by software updates issued by Apple. Apple subsequently barred iPhone purchases with cash and required service activation with each unit.
This sequence of events led to a spike in news stories discussing the locking-unlocking issue, which is beginning to get traction with lawmakers in Washington as well as with savvy American consumers.