The iPhone, My Four Cents

Awhile ago, I blogged on the eBay Developers Weblog about my trip to Macworld. That was my two cents...here's my other two cents.

Apple markets the iPhone as a device that runs widgets on OS X, yet has no outlined strategy for third party applications. The iPod, which offers a great opportunity for third parties to develop games, has yet to leverage the power of these developers to add value to iPod (and iTunes for that matter). As such, I'm not highly optimistic that Apple will be offering an SDK to developers any time soon.

There's an interesting question that wireless data raises. Assuming Apple (or third party app, such as Skype) were to build a soft phone VOIP application, it's feasible to bypass the carrier altogether. Skype (with wifi phones from Netgear and Belkin) are already doing this, offering the potential for a paradigm shift in the phone industry.

I'm not sure about their forecast of 10M phones by end 1008 at $499-$599 each. Apple has a loooooong history in fiercely holding onto their MAP pricing, so don't count on price erosion. To put that in perspective, Cingular's current subscriber base, for ALL phones, is 60M. Research in Motion, with their cult following for their Blackberries, managed to sell less than 6M last year, with multiple models for multiple carriers.

Of course, that's just my four cents.