Here it comes; iPhone v1.0 is a closed phone

Eventually it is on the market; iPhone is ready to sell in US market. Going back the last week’s announcement about some technical features of iPhone, we see that it is a closed phone, which does not developers to create native iPhone apps…

Ok, Jobs announced that Safari browser on iPhone will support full AJAX applications plus an API set which enables accessing native iPhone functionality (like contact list, call management and etc.).

There are still may questions to be answered;

• The performance of Safari browser may not enough for handling heavy AJAX code on the device
• What is the capability and security model for provided SDK ?
• How AJAX apps will be delivered to iPhone? Will they be downloaded as a web page or is there an installation package?

Apple knows it very well that, what makes a “computing hardware” successful is the open environment for 3rd part apps. It is not reasonable to provide a device which runs only Apple software. If so, it makes iPhone only a next generation iPod+a phone+a browsing device, but not a smartphone.

The most major motivation for smartphone buyers is, they want to customize their phone with third party apps and they want to feel flexible while doing it. It is the success behind Symbian and MS Mobile platforms.

As a smartphone user, I dropped the iPhone from my shopping list until is will open itself to developers. Many rumors state that iPhone v2.0 will eventually include and open SDK for native iPhone apps. Anyway, do you pay 600 USD for a mobile phone that you can not customize with downloadable applications?