A lot of ppl seem to assume that because the mobile market is so competitive apple will have to change their upgrade cycles and so a new phone is coming. It's a load of nonsense. Mobile phones aren't really much more competitive than the computers industry. The designs change but the feature-sets don't really and I'm don't expect Apple to be trying any new designs out any time soon...
Depending on how far off the 3G model is, Apple may put off the Asia release till late 2008, because 3G means a lot more there than it does here. We've had 3G since 2003 and whilst most ppl have it, most of us don't use it. Japan have had it for much longer and its much better implemented (I think they even have some kind of 4G now - altho its not Wimax). But it wouldn't surprise me if Jobsy foisted 2G upon them, its just that who would buy it, knowing a 3G one was a few months away.
As for the touch/iphone pricing, I would expect apple to drop the price of the touch gradually to bring it in line with the classic, as it eventually will replace it altogether. Whether or not that premium is lost at the expense of bringing the iphone in line with the touch memory-wise is hard to say. Apple probably don't know whether or not they're gonna stratify the product line in the same way as they make that transition, as it would depend heavily on the rate at which flash gets cheaper. Right now, keeping the iphone at half capacity saves them a lot of money to spend on the additional parts a phone requires, so that they make a decent profit on the handset, and then their chunk of the line rental revenue (which is probably all profit and more than the handset costs in the first place).
