So apple computer inc. dropped their new iPhone today. Pretty amazing gadget if you ask me. It does pretty much everything for everyone (phone, email- more on this later, camera, video, etc. etc. etc. etc.) which is amazing in its own right, but the real question/issue is: how does it doing everything affect the business world?First we have the fact that this is a phone, first and foremost a phone. Cingular has an exclusive deal (not sure how long exclusivity they have though) that allows them to feed off of the Apple/iTunes/iPod brand thats hot right now. They also probably get some cut of iTunes sales from the phone, because I’m sure the iTunes loaded on there will let you buy direct eventually (how can you not with wifi and edge capability). So who does this affect: Best Buy, Circuit City, Target, Amazon, and whomever else sells music (and movies, and…). But these are the same people who might get to sell the same device too, so we’ll see how that pans out.Next we have the widgets. You can theoretically run the same javascript widgets that OSX supports on the iPhone. Who does this matter to? Well Yahoo’s widget engine will likely lose alot of steam, so will google’s sidebar widgets, and maybe even Vista widgets (thats something we’ll see when vista comes out). Why are widgets important? well the first few people to get their sites widgetized and on the phones will have an amazing new “in” to the mobile web, and we all know thats going to open new doors for monetization.Lastly, email. well I’ll have to cover this in another post. Its too big to tackle as just a blurb.
iPhone – changing the telecom game?
