Quarter of Apple iPhones hacked

Bored of waiting for Apple to launch the iPhone on the network you like? You and a great big wodge of US iPhone users. According to an analyst quoted by Reuters, one quarter of iPhone owners are using their Apple mobiles on networks that aren’t AT&T’s.

If that’s the case, then it’s Apple that should be worried, rather than AT&T (the carrier said last week it had achieved the highest number of quarterly subscriber adds of any US carrier ever after all.) Apple gets a share of data revenues for each AT&T user signed up on an iPhone contract, so for every one that’s off the grid, the company’s bottom line takes a hit – up to $500 million according to Reuters.

It just shows the pulling power of the iPhone – after all, that’s one in four iPhone owners that are risking ending up with a brick the next time Apple updates the device’s firmware.