Iphone not working

So this is my gf's iphone that I bought for her back in Dec. She was charging it on my mac and now there's nothing working with the phone. It says emergency calls only, and when it's in sleep mode it displays a cord and the itunes icon.

When I open up itunes with her phone plugged in it says. "itunes can not activate your phone because the sim card is not inserted or needs a pin"

I took out the sc and put back in. I also reset the phone.

The only thing about this phone is she never registered it with itunes.

She has used my mac to charged her phone dozens of time in the past.

Is/was the phone unlocked/jailbroken?

Did she happen to update the software?

It looks like it has been updated and you will need to unlock it again.

If your running Leopard 10.5.6 i would be tempted to unlock it on a PC as getting the iphone to go into DFU mode is difficult.

I had a nightmare trying to unlock my old 2g iphone just after 10.5.6 came out and just used works laptop which took 5 mins.

The phone was not unlocked or jailbroken

I'm pretty sure you have to activate it through iTunes. Which probably means that they did that for you at the store when you purchased it. Looks like you are going to have to do it again.