The iPhone effect

I think no one was really surprised when Apple introduced the new iPhone 3G at WWDC yesterday, but it's good to finally have facts instead of rumours. Most of the features were as expected and all in all it's a huge improvement on the original iPhone. One thing I'm still curious about though is the pricing model. Sure, they announced the US price of $199–299 but the full price of owning one is still unknown, and there's no word on the pricing elsewhere either. The fact that they're also locked and sold for only one specific operator in each country will surely be a problem in many cases. For example here in Finland I would never get one just because of the operator it's on.

One thing that's really great about the iPhone is the effect it has on the whole industry. As its user interface, applications and services set the bar much higher than before, it's forcing all the other manufacturers to really raise their game in many aspects. While this is great for the consumer it's going to be a problem especially for companies that haven't been doing so great to begin with. (such as Motorola) Also, with phones based on Google's Android coming to shake things up later this year, the mobile phone industry won't be showing signs of cooling down anytime soon.