avigalante YOU are the presumptuous one! (especially for someone who just joined this year).
Current reports indicate that iPhone demand may be waning. A very easy way to reboost demand prior to the holiday season would be to get rid of the major barrier for most people, which is the cost.
Personally I am a "broke" college student not unlike the guy who posted earlier, and the iPhone is CLEARLY aimed at young adults like me. I hate my Treo700p due to its dated looks and lack of durability and have indeed often considered buying an iPhone, mostly for its multimedia/wifi functionality,but am holding off b/c:
1) price with a new contract is still too high for a phone, it is almost in tablet/UMPC range! There are linux phones out or coming out at lower price points with more features and subsidized WM5 phones cost 1/2 as much.
2) many people I know & love hate Cingular
Many of the corporate people I work with have not switched and don't plan to, due to the iPhone's lack of enterprise solutions, corporate email, true PIM functionality, ect. Steve Jobs clearly indicated that the iPhone is first and foremost an iPod, "the best iPod we've ever made". So the iPhone will be as much a buisness tool as an iBook was: cool, useful, a little daring, but not competing (or even trying to) directly with the status quo (Blackberry and Windows Mobile).
imho, HDD-based ipods will be phased out in the next ~2-6yr due to the falling costs, rising capacities, increased battery life, durability, and speed of flash ram. So the iPhone, with its SSD, scratch-proof multitouch, and advanced OS represent the future, not the increasingly dated (non-nano) ipod line.
All that being said, weren't there reports of Apple sealing the deal with European partners, so....of course there will be a new (EU) iPhone soon...???
And the gui sshots were basically confirmed true, so there will likely be a new, but not radically revamped, (based on the ui pics) ipod soon as well.
In terms of timing, you might consider that this is a cell-phone, being released into a largely saturated and constantly innovating market, the first of its kind for Apple, so all bets may be off as to the regularity of updates, as Apple may have to be cutthroat to survive, plus flash ram prices are constantly falling and 8GB really isn't that much in an era of <$100 16GB SD cards. Finally, there are quite a few new phones slated for Q1 2008 reslease, including the rumored Linux-Treo and the next batch of WM phones, so my guess is we will see a tweaked or upgraded iPhone sooner rather than later either way.s
