Rumors of an Apple-branded mobile phone have been swirling on-and-off for many years. Over the last six months, iPhone mania has reached a fever pitch. Apple’s stock price, at all time highs, actually dropped for a few days recently over a tech news report that manufacturing woes would delay the much-anticipated phone’s arrival.

If internet news was printed on paper, literal forests would have been sacrificed in point-counterpoint discussions of the iPhone’s features, price, visage, etc.

Here’s what’s scary. Apple has never said they’re making an iPhone. No hints. No shy, coy, and demure smiles. No knowing winks. Nothing. It’s quite a phenomenon, really. A company’s stock value rises and falls on wishful thinking but tech analysts.

Now, I am not a stock market expert. I don’t own any Apple stock (I did once, and was not smart enough to keep it), and I am not offering any personal investing advice. However, if Apple doesn’t announce an iPhone in about two weeks at MacWorld Expo, when the eyes of the media are firmly focused on the company’s new product announcements, I expect Apple’s stock price to fall. Sadly, it won’t be because Apple didn’t follow through on a product they said they were going to make. It’ll be due to Apple not releasing a product others thought they should make.

But if Apple does make a mobile phone, it has the potential to be a big hit. Here’s how. Everyone assumes, due to the success of the iPod, that Apple’s iPhone will be first an iPod, and then a phone. I don’t think so. I do think the iPhone will play music and share the music interface and software of the iPod. However, the “music on a phone” market is not what Apple will be targeting.

The iPhone will be a “smartphone”, like a Palm or Windows Mobile device, except it will work like and with the Mac operating system. Integrated. Simple, but powerful. User-friendly. Seamless sharing of data and media between computer and phone, wirelessly through Bluetooth technology.

I expect the iPhone to have a camera, for both still and video images. Why not a version of “iChat mobile” to give the iPhone video chat capabilities?

The iPhone has the potential to change the whole paradigm of the mobile phone industry. How? We’ll talk about that next year. Have a safe and prosperous New Year! See you in 2007!

© 2006 Peter F. Zimowski