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In yet another desperate attempt to maintain it’s monopoly in the smartphone market Apple has officially declared that Jailbreaking is illegal.  Jailbreaking is the process of unlocking the phone to work with other carriers and manipulate the iPhones OS.  The statement is surprisingly close on the heels of Palm’s CEO saying he is not worried about Apple.  This is starting to look like Apple is feeling the jaws of the competition closing in and getting ready to take a big bite out of their market share.

Over the last couple of years Apple has been basking in the glory of being popular with an ever increasing market share.  One thing they don’t like tampered with however is their hardware base or their code.  Releases such as the Hackintosh where it allows OS X to be loaded on non Apple hardware are starting to bother Apple and they are getting vocal about it.

What Apple does not understand is that excessive control over your devices and technology will not make you any additional money.  Apple has a good product in the iPhone but people don’t want to be stuck using AT&T, in fact I know people that would never give that company their money.  Things like this either push customers to the competition or to do things like Jailbreak their phones.

The international aspect is another big area that Apple is overlooking.  Cell phones are big in the USA but in other countries they are a lot bigger and people tend to spend a lot more money to get them.  They want the high-end devices like the iPhone and willingly pay for a Jailbroken device.  No matter how much Apple wants they can’t stop companies for whom it is big business.

Apple may actually take legal action against those that are creating the Jailbreak applications in an attempt to stop the process from continuing.  But is it really a good thing to go after people who are obviously your biggest supporters?  I am quite sure that once someone is sued they tend not to support the company doing the suing.

All of this can be good news for Palm which at this point is sounding like they are going to make their phone open and allow for heavy customization.   It is also good news for Android which today announced that they will be accepting pay-for applications in their marketplace.  This will attract more developers and along with it more paying customers.

Apple may have a strong following but they still don’t understand their followers.