Right now, the iPhone is one of the best phones on the market. Apple wants to sell more than 10 million of them by the end of the year- but can the SDK bring these numbers?

With the announcement of this Thursdays iPhone SDK event in Cupertino, February has left us without any details being publicly available. No one quite knows why it is being delivered late- Jobs did announce it in October! But at this point, no one is counting the days- they just want the SDK!

Since that day in October, we have heard very little about the SDK, except for small rumblings and speculation about it’s distribution within iTunes. The iPhone SDK could mean big things for the iPhone- as the closed platform is the largest complaint with the iPhone, besides EDGE speeds. While Apple’s included applications are great, the iPhone lacks user customizability.

At WWDC 2007, Jobs revealed that iPhone applications could be developed through Safari- in “Web 2.0 Applications”. This was met with much disappointment from developers and consumers who wanted to take advantage of the full potential in the iPhone. Native Applications could be seal the deal for the iPhone. Lets not forget about the original Macintosh, introduced in January 1984. While far ahead of its time, the major flaw and ultimate result for poor sales was due to the lack of developers!

While the current situation with the iPhone is slightly different, developers are begging to develop for the iPhone and so far, Apple has kept the platform closed. By opening it up we might see a surge in iPhone sales as developers put the hardware to all kinds of creative uses. I hope to be pleasantly surprised with Thursdays announcement and sincerely hope that Apple has learned their lesson from the past. The iPhone has an unbelievable potential!

–Matt Dodd