Make Money Unlocking the iPhone

I admire people who has that entrepreneurial spirit. It allows them to see great opportunities during those rare occasions. During the height of the iPhone craze, a group of those business-minded people saw money hawking iPhones. Another group saw money hacking them.

Bumped into Manila Bulletin’s Technews Section Editor Art Samaniego at the press launch yesterday and he greeted me when he saw my nametag and says he’s been reading the blog ever since Ajay introduced it to him.

Great chatting with someone who’s in the forefront of technology advancements, and a person who has access to them. Anyway, he showed me his jailbreaked iPhone and shared this story.

One Filipino has been making a huge killing unlocking iPhones here in the Philippines. Phone unlocking is nothing new here — just go visit any mall in their mobile phone section and everybody’s doing it for a few hundred bucks. But the iPhone, only a few people knows how to do it or has access to the device with the guts to unlock it.

A running total of 75 iPhones with unlocking fees of as much as Php3,000USD 51INR 4,334EUR 49CNY 372 a pop. That’s about Php225,000USD 3,834INR 325,035EUR 3,652CNY 27,923 so far and I’m sure that guy is sticll counting more unlocked iPhones as we speak. Pretty nice quick cash, IMO.

He reminded me of an old dorm mate back in college. He practically made himself a millionaire by assembling his own version of the RS232 Data Cable for Nokia phones. He was able to strike a deal with distributors in Greenhills which resells his data cables for Php2,500USD 43INR 3,612EUR 41CNY 310 a pop. That kid got a car after a few months. Of course the business didn’t last very long — a lot of people copied it and made their own version. Still, going at it first and striking it hard was his biggest lead.

Of course, several friends and I wanted some piece of the action so we pooled some money to buy one of his cables and we ran our own business loading up picture logos and wallpapers to the people in college. It wasn’t as lucrative though but it was my first dibs into serial entrepreneurship.