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 How hard is the concept of an unlocked phone? Really says alot of how intelligent they think consumers are. I hope this is the route Apple goes

Here’s your first problem.

Person buys an unlocked Apple phone, then goes to Verizon (or here Rogers) and says “I want to buy service for this phone”.

9 times out of 10 the answer will be “Sorry, but that can’t happen. Only phones bought from Verizon will work on our network. You need to buy this LG Chocolate if you want a music phone”

Then you get, depending on the stubbornness of the customer, a 5 - 30 minute argument, the end result of which is that the sales drone will refuse to sell the service, and the customer storms back to the Apple store and demands to know why he was sold a phone that wouldn’t work.

Apple will, of course, explain what’s going on, the customer can go back to Verizon, and still will not get the service sold to them. Its nothing to do with the intelligence of the consumer, and all to do with the training of the person selling the service.

And that completely ignores the CDMA issues that most consumers are completely unaware of.

The _only_ way an unlocked GSM cellphone would sell to the average consumer (and I’ve got my fingers crossed, since I hate my RAZR, I would love to get something else) is:

1) Apple positions it as being a full-fledged iPod so people can swallow the price. If they’re comparing against a subsidized $50 Sony Walkman phone they need a reason to understand the price difference, and in a country mostly unaware of locking — remember in Canada we don’t even have number portability — in-depth explanations of that aren’t going to fly

2) Apple is positioned to sell some sort of service directly with it, so the “it won’t work” argument doesn’t happen, and/or Apple positions themselves as the “upgrade” phone, so when you walk into the Apple store they pop out your Verizon sim card and put it in for you.

Mind you that would be very typical of Apple’s current trend — selling something that looks simple to the average consumer, but offers extra possibilities to those technical enough to understand.