Lock or Unlock: that is the question...

Apple Trends

As you know, all sold phones by Apple are anchored to the specific mobile operator. In the USA it's AT&T, in France — the Orange, in Germany — T-Mobile, O2 in the Great Britain.
You can use iPhone only with a SIM-card of the mobile operators set forth above. It's specific business model of the Apple company. Under the contract the mobile operator is obliged to deduct certain percent from the income of the Apple subscriber. For certain it's not known how many, but approximately no more than 22% from the total profit. Nevertheless, the majority of Mac users prefer the unlock any iPhone than to pay to the Big Brother.

The legal use of iPhone is represented as follows:

• Apple Store sells the iPhone;
• The subscriber comes home and through the Internet concludes the contract with the local mobile operator;
• After a while iPhone will activated.

Hence, iPhone will function in a network of any mobile operator if to fulfill following actions:

1. To activate the iPhone.
2. To bypass SIM-card check.
   

The 1st step, as one would expect, is named as activation. Its essence consists in getting access to device basic functions.
The 2nd step is named as unblocking, or unlock iPhone for all mobile operators of the World.

As it the unlock?

It's modification of the software of the GSM-module which allows to use iPhone, as usual mobile phone, with a SIM-card of any mobile operator.
Applications. Probably, as you know, on the native applications the Apple business model was not restricted. Certainly, Steve Jobs gave the chance to create applications for iPhone to any freelance web-developers, but only within the limits of Safari browser.
Thus, the life of nonnative mobile applications is impossible without jailbreak iPhone modifications. The great sacral essence of jailbreak — the real chance for all talented web-developers to make money on own mobile applications.