Apple Inc. is "not married" to the current iPhone sales model, according to Apple's Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook. Marketwatch reported that Mr. Cook told attendees at a Goldman Sachs investors conference that Apple is open to new ways of selling the devices.

At issue is Apple's current model of allowing only one carrier per geographic region to exclusively sell the device, an issue that has earned some criticism from analysts and pundits for limiting potential sales.

At the same time, many of those same analysts have noted that exclusive deals have heretofore been at the heart of the revenue sharing agreement Apple has with those carriers. With AT&T, for instance, Apple collects part of the subscriber fees for the lifetime of the iPhone contract.

The company is thought to have made similar deals in the European countries where the iPhone has been also been released, though some country regulations have required Apple to allow the iPhones to be portable to the customer's carrier of choice. So far, Apple has worked around this by charging more for an unlocked phone in countries like France where this regulation has been in place.

Apple tends to be very, very close lipped about its future plans, and such comments from a high ranking Apple executive like Mr. Cook should not be taken lightly. In the U.S., AT&T has an exclusive deal with Apple for five years, but these comments suggest that may not be written in stone.

Apple has seen many iPhones entering the grey market, with a large number of phones going to India, China, and other Asian countries where the device has not yet been released. It is certainly possible that Mr. Cook's comments are aimed more at Apple's plans for these markets than the existing deals in the U.S. and Europe.

To that effect, Mr. Cook commented that the iPhone would likely always be a target for hackers, perhaps signalling that Apple was finally bowing to the inevitable. InformationWeek reported that Mr. Cook talked about the large overseas demand for hacked iPhones during the conference.

Perhaps most importantly, Mr. Cook also said that Apple was well on its way to meeting its goal of selling 10 million iPhones by the end of calendar 2008. Apple has seem some downward pressure on its stock as some analysts have been lowering their overall target of iPhone unit sales.