Any mobile ISV not looking into the possibilities of iPhone development is mad ;-) AFAICS, they have done almost everything right. Developing software for iPhone is cheaper than for Symbian:

iPhone: USD 99 a year, which appears to include an ACS.

Symbian: USD 200 a year for an ACS

iPhone: Free XCode toolchain including on-device debugging

Symbian: Dev version of Carbide costs EUR 299 USD 450), and the Dev version of Carbide has on-device debugging. For development you can use a Mac Mini, sharing your WinPC 's screen and keyboard.

Cost per sold app:

iPhone: 30%

Symbian: Handango will be 50%, according to numerous reports on the Web. Motricity: will it still exists in a months time?

And, most importantly, it looks like iPhone has the users who are willing to pay for software. The Kleiner Perkins USD 100,000,000.00 investment fund. That is a lot of money for projected 10 million users at the end of 2008.

The impact on the smartphone device business isn't that big when you look at device sales. But the impact on the smartphone developer scene will be huge.

The site is down and it seems that they are still working on editing the video so I guess we still have to wait a bit for things to settle down. Sounds indeed as something worth looking at.

Even I had problems...I am not yet able to watch the video. The Quicktime player starts and gets stuck.

Apparently the iPhone SDK also supports profiling, for free.

With Carbide you need to buy the Pro version to get profiling, at 1300 euro's, which is almost 2000 dollar.

1300 euros buys a lot of Mac development hardware.

Can we exapect an Flash Player for iPhone ported from some Open Source project, or even just the FLV player, like MobiTubia.

Will the API allowed in iPhone SDK is capable of this?

i hope so, but not sure :)

// chall3ng3r //

@Sander: The S60 SDKs also support profiling (or rather has nothing against it), it is the tools that are the problem. :)

Hm, i'm still not able download it. But looks like thats not only one issue with that SDK.

1. Developer should have Mac Os Leopard to run IDE. [1]
2. VOIP services, for example, are basically out of luck [2]
3. Developers can only use the published APIs and only in the way Apple says they can use them. [2]
4. Applications cannot write data anywhere except in their designated area, meaning developers can’t modify data from any other applications. [2]
5. Can access the Internet only via wifi, not the cell networks. [2]
6. Users can only run one application at a time, and if they leave an application it quits.

References:
[1]. Apple Support Forum discussion.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1430617&tstart=15

[2]. Michael Arrington blog. iPhone SDK And Restrictions: Some Of The Details Aren’t Great.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/07/iphone-sdk-some-of-the-details-arent-great/

Not only you need a Mac (I do have one...) but you need 10.5 (Leopard) MacOSX to running the SDK. Crap, I am still on Tiger... It is $129 bugs to upgrade. :p

There seems to be some limitations to the SDK people are blogging about. i.e. only 1 3rd party can be run at a time, no background application, and no VoIP, only restrict access to the file system (data caging).

See this
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/07/iphone-sdk-some-of-the-details-arent-great/

-W

May be Enterprise Program $299 members will get more powerfull SDK..?