Factory unlocked iPhone 5s are expected to hit stores later this year and thanks to an Apple Insider reader we now know the prices. It looks like unintentionally, the Apple website revealed prices for factory unlocked iPhone 5 smartphones ahead of the U.S. release.
Whether it was just a human error or a breach of the site’s security, Apple hasn’t reacted yet to reports that it has leaked the prices for factory unlocked iPhone 5s. Apple Insider and CNET believe the pricing on the website is what you could expect to pay for an unlocked iPhone 5.
Apple Insider writes that their reader Dhaval Dinani was the first to discover the pricing of Apple’s factory unlocked iPhone 5 smartphones. The website “confirmed independently” and agrees that “the alleged unlocked units are anything but official and could merely be placeholders in Apple’s database”. However, it’s very likely that’s how much we are going to pay for an unlocked version of an iPhone 5.
The website made a comparison of the U.S. online Apple Store iPhone 5 prices for the factory unlocked versions and those sold in Canada. The conclusion: the prices that leaked on the website are very consistent to those for iPhone 5 units sold in Canada, where all the smartphones are sold factory unlocked.
In Canada, the unlocked factory iPhone 5 units have prices ranging from $649 to $849 or CAD $699 to CAD $799. The carrier-subsidized versions in the United States are a priority in the market for several weeks, until Apple brings out the unlocked versions of the smartphone. Whereas in Canada that’s immediately available, in the United States consumers still don’t know when the factory unlocked iPhone 5s will hit the stores.
Since waiting for the factory unlocked iPhone 5 in the U.S. usually means too much in terms of buying the latest IT craze, many consumers just sign up for service with a carrier and some of them eventually try to unlock their iPhones by themselves. A lot, however, would rather just stick to the carrier and pay for another contract, rather than give unlocking iPhone 5 a try.
