Sweet 3G iPhone

As expected, Steve Jobs unveiled 3G iPhone during his keynote in WWDC 08. However, the phone wont be available until July 11.

Apple has abandoned revenue sharing arrangement with the wireless carriers and allow the carriers to subsidize iPhone. That is why the new iPhone will cost as less as $199 for the 8GB version. In contrast, an 8GB iPod Touch costs $299.

IPhone software 2.0 is the central piece of Apple's strategy. The support of third-party software developers is essential to the ultimate success of the iPhone platform. The reason why Microsoft Windows OS became a dominant platform is because the enormous independent software support. Apple is determined to foster such an independent software developers community for its iPhone platform. The PC war is over and Microsoft has won. But the war on mobile platform has just begun, and iPhone is pulling way ahead of the pack, despite its relative late entry.

Mobile platform can be HUGE. Many people in the developing world may ONLY use mobile phones to access the internet. I think MID (Mobile Internet Device) will be as big as PC. On the hardware side, the battle is between Intel's Atom (x86) and ARM's ARM core. On the software side (OS side), it may be between Google's Android and Apple's iPhone. Palm foolishly gave away its software control and solely relied on Microsoft's mobile platform (Palm spun out Palm OS to PalmSource which later was acquired by and withered in a Japanese mobile software company called ACCESS). RIM's blackberry is only an email platform, at current moment, and I would not be surprised it will adopt a similar strategy of Apple's. But it may be too late for RIM to catch up. Microsoft's mobile platform is pretty much dead, I believe.

I would use any pullback in Apple stock prices to buy more its shares.

Disclaimer: I own shares in Apple common stock.