iPhone May Become Open to New Applications Soon

The iPhone may become more open soon.

iPod Touch

How open the environment is depends on the support they provide in the new release, as discussed in the Forbes article below:

Macworld may be over, but for a group of developers the most important Apple news has yet to be unveiled: the much-anticipated iPhone software development kit (SDK).
Developers say they can’t wait to get their hands on the SDK, which is expected to be released in late February and will allow third-party developers to create native applications for Apple’s (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) iPhone.
http://www.forbes.com/technology/2008/01/26/iphone-apple-developers-tech-wire-cx_ew_0128iphone.html

This follows the trend of communication products allowing third-party applications and developers, sometimes with low barrier to entry to the third-parties. Google Android, Nokia, Symbian, and now Apple have available environments for creating new applications. This provides new opportunities for unified communications products like mCUE which have, in the era of Web 2.0, come from unlikely sources and small startup companies (such as digg.com, facebook.com, skype.com, and others).