The End of the (traditional) Cellphone
Oh god another "the end of" article from fALk you might think... Well here is the deal and I have not seen this elsewhere yet but I think I stand on good ground. Apples iPhone SDK yesterday allows the development of applications that do Voice over IP - just not over the cellular network. You know what this means? Apple is slowly transitioning people away from the cellphone bussiness into the (free) wifi world by giving allowing Voice over IP wherever possible - also to other iPhone users. Now imagine the iPhone has about the success that the iPod has and all of the sudden you have every second person in the non third world running around with a device that - when within reach of a wifi spot - can call each other (with all the great things that chat programs do - like see peoples statuses etc) - for free. Now we all know free wifi is spotty at the moment and I am not saying this will change this right on the spot - but imagine now instead of wifi - wimax with a much bigger reach and say FON hotspots with wimax and you get the picture that in the not so distant future there might be no need for a cellphone network anymore - at least in rural areas this is already happening (wifi at home, wifi at work, wifi in the coffee shop). Heck I even bet that apple will see a HUGE demand for the iPod touch with the 2.0 firmware because people can now CALL on the freaking thing (if it would have a microphone).
This is an industry moving change that will cost the carriers a lot of customers in the near future (I predict a similar move that happened from landline to cellphone to happen from cellphone to wiPhone(tm) or with all the gaming capibilities maybe even the wiiPhone ;).