How many unlocked iPhones are there in the wild? I think I have a good idea

I started thinking about this after I read Jacqui Cheng's Ars Technica post this morning.

Three sources she quotes differ widely on this question.

The iPhone Dev team thinks there are several hundred thousand unlocked iPhones out there.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster cites numerous recent conversations that he and his analysts have had with Apple retail store personnel. Apparently, a growing number of customers have purchased more than one iPhone at a time. Munster, as well as some of said retail personnel, believe that some of these purchasers have bought more than one because they were going to attempt an unlock.

Munster (I wonder if he ever got any "Munsters" grief as a kid), then guesses that 10 percent of all iPhones bought in September have been unlocked.

Apparently relying on the fact that iPhone unlocks were general available only starting in September, Cheng does some back-of-the-envelope-sounding math. She guesstimates that 405, 390 iPhones were sold in September- then Munster's "10 percent" theory would equate to 40,539 unlocked iPhones out there.

But then Cheng cites analyst Shaw Wu as guessing the number of iPhone unlocks is "probably pretty small."

Of course "pretty small" is subjective, but I would come down more on Shaw Wu's side.

My reasons for doing this are technosociological. Hackers and modders talk to each other, but in doing so, tend to overestimate their numbers. That's a human trait.

How many unlocked iPhones are there? I'd guess no more than 10,000. I think about 8,000.

Now's your turn.

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