The extent to which Apple opens up the iphone (and ipod touch, which sadly gets too often ignored, although happily gets to piggy back on the iphones success) may have a strong effect on if their phone becomes both a leading enterprise smartphone and a...... something new.
There are (very basically) two types of phones out there today (at least in the somewhat anemic US market, perhaps one of the reasons the iphone is doing so well here).
---1.) "Mass Market" phones. Sure, they can take pictures, video, and surf the net, but they such at this, and even the better ones are used almost exclusively for calling and text messaging.
---2.) "Smartphones." The blackberry and treo are the best examples. Exterprise integration is vital for these phones to utilize their abilities and make businesses buy them (and pay for their relatively high costs).
The iphone fits into neither category at the moment. It certainly isn't mass market, and yet is far from an enterprise phone. Obviously, Apple plans to correct this with the sd5 and enterprise support (if this is something additional, as the March 7 invitation may have suggested).
But Apple needs to focus on the potential for the 3rd type of phone.
---3.) "Consumer Smartphone/funphone (ok, that is Really cheesey)/multimedia phone/all-purpose phone/luxury-high end phone/more than a phone-phone." For the non-enterprise users out there who nonetheless want a powerful phone, this is a potentially huge market. The iphone when it came out was exactly this, with its amazing ipod, video, and internet (minus flash capability which, sorry Steve Jobs, is necessary to have it be considered a full internet browser).
If tomorrow's announcement focuses soley/primarily on the enterprise features, then sure, many people will be happy, and the iphone will be able to compete with the blackberry (I don't see the treo realistically competing for that long against either, or Palm surviving). BUT, they may loose the opportunity to strengthen their position as the sole participants in the third market for US phones. Without a really open development process (they should use the enthusiasm for the iphone to their advantage) they will stifle third-party development. Holding the hard line on flash, peripherals, itunes control (well, that's expected and probably ok, give the dominance of itunes), etc. will only dampen their hold on the market, and open up opportunities for other companies to launch fully-open phones to directly compete with the iphone, many of which have already appeared overseas.
---Category 4- "handheld computer"- It's possible, and if Apple doesn't want to move in that direction (read: Newton bitterness), then they should open it up to let others do so. Imagine being able to plug in a keyboard, mouse, and even larger monitor to the iphone and make it a real computer.
Will the iphone remain strong, you bet, but this reminds me of a comment made by Jobs, Wozniak, or some other Apple bigwig in the past couple of years. He said (or implied) that while Apple did eventually open up Macs to outside developers, their idea of a perfect world would be one in which they controlled ALL applications on the Mac. Perhaps this is their chance to regain what they lost, which is doubly sad because the iphone/ipod touch have the ability to, like the mac, revolutionize an industry. Or, they could become more like Microsoft (please don't send me too much hate mail for that comment).
