The
decision is something Apple
"is wrestling with..."
-Steve Jobs
Steve had previously said that the Apple iPhone would be closed to 3rd party development to ensure that the device worked flawlessly.
In my opinion, this is going to seriously HELP the adoption of the iPhone as a platform. I have read various places about the iPhone being a new corporate platform. I honestly don't know if that is going to be the case, but without the ability for some of these companies to develop their own custom solutions, it was definitely a no-go.
For those of you that have been hiding under a rock recently, Mobile development is rapidly becoming something that is good to have experience with as a developer. As phones become more and more powerful, being able to write applications and sites that run on them is becoming of more and more importance.
People are used to having information at their fingertips to a much greater degree these days, and as data transfer rates have increased on their phones and the phones have gathered more and more PDA functionality to themselves, this means that those fingertips don't have to reach for a keyboard anymore, just into the pocket to flip open the phone.
This has been one of the major advantages that Symbian, Java, and Windows Mobile has extended to the community. SDK's are readily available for almost any phone currently on the market, and each day the platforms become more standardized so that if you create an application on one phone, it will work on any other phone that runs that platform.
It will be interesting to see what will happen if Apple decides to open up the development for the iPhone since it has more horsepower backing it up than most other devices out there... not to mention a significantly better graphics subsystem than most of the other phones as well.