| 27th October - The senior director
of entertainment products at Motorola questions whether Apple will truly "open
up" the iPhone. "We've yet to see Apple's SDK [software developers'
kit], and I'm sure there will be some level of [Apple] control that goes along
with it. I guarantee you that you will not see a Napster music service on the
iPhone," said David Ulmer, as he and three other wireless industry big-wigs
pondered the impact of Apple's latest status symbol at this week's CTIA Wireless
I.T. and Entertainment trade show in San Francisco. "The iPhone may
offer some sort of open web. But music sales? Device sales? Accessory sales? Anything
you pay is probably going to come from Apple." But not everyone agrees
with him. Including the bigwig who sat just to his left. "Apple has announced
an SDK, and if you believe them - and I think most of us do - it will be open,"
said Sam Altman, the co-founder and CEO of loopt, a social network-ified mobile
mapping service. "You'll be able to upload whatever app you want on it." Last
week, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced that the company will spit out an iPhone
SDK in February next year, but Stevie didn't say if the kit will be available
to all third-party developers or just a chosen few. And there's no word on whether
third-parties will have the power to build apps that actually sell stuff on the
iPhone. Whatever Apple does with the iPhone, Motorola's Ulmer is glad it's
here. He believes that iPhone has opened new doors for old-school handset manufacturers,
including Motorola. "For us, it's been quite beneficial, because wireless
carriers are now willing to talk about all kinds of new experiences on handhelds
that they wouldn't consider in the past," he said. Plus, he says,
the Jesus Phone has allowed manufacturers to push much more expensive devices.
"It opened up a whole new pricing tier," he continued. "There are
[people] who are willing to pay a lot for a phone. They willing to do more than
sign up for a wireless plan and get four phones for free - which is where the
market was headed."Bootnote
Sitting on the other side of Ullmer, Lee
Ott, director of mobile products at Yahoo!, threw out a pretty telling stat about
the nearly-four-month-old iPhone. "In the very short period of time since
the iPhone launched on one carrier in one country, it is one of the top five [mobile]
devices in terms of daily Yahoo! usage," he said. "In terms of internet
usage nothing is holding a candle to the iPhone. Back
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