Release of iPhone Has Industry Abuzz

There's hype. There's hysteria. And there's history. The hype around Apple Inc.'s upcoming iPhone is abundantly clear. So is the hysteria. But how the iPhone will leave its historical mark after Friday's launch is to be seen.


Will the gadget - which triples as a cell phone, iPod media player and a wireless Web device - be as ''revolutionary'' as Apple CEO Steve Jobs has claimed?

Even if the product flops for some reason or stays limited to the high-end corner of the smart phone market, the iPhone has already jolted the industry, showing that it is not just the body and outward beauty of the handset that counts, but what's inside.

Remember the television ads for the Motorola RAZR?

The commercials showed off the sexy, thin profile of the clamshell handset and seduced more than 50 million people from 2004 to 2006 to buy it, making it the most popular cell phone ever sold.

But people want more now. There are plenty of slim, ultra-thin options out there, but not many make finding photos, saving phone contacts, picking up voice mail and selecting ringtones insanely easy.

''This is the most anticipated phone since Alexander Graham Bell did his,'' said Michael Gartenberg, an industry analyst at JupiterResearch. ''Part of it is the fascination with Apple's products and how well they design them, but it's also about how poor the design in software is in cell phones now, and how much time Apple has spent working on this.''

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