Jan. 10, 2007

Apple CEO Steve Jobs used his keynote address at CES / MacWorld yesterday to unveil Apple's highly anticipated iPhone.

The company's stock was up more than 5 percent on the news.

Apple's new wireless device, which runs on Mac OS X, will play music as well as make phone calls and also is designed to sync media, email accounts, photos and a lot more.

The iPhone features a 3.5-inch color screen and even a digital camera.

Apple's iPhone will forgo a traditional keyboard and instead feature Multi-Touch technology, which was developed to ignore unintended touches.

Wireless industry analyst Jeff Kagan expects Apple to get a strong bounce from the iPhone announcement, but does not see it making a big difference to the industry competitors.

"Overall, Apple's announcement is very similar to other moves from Disney, ESPN and many others. Some work and some don't," Kagan said. "I think Apple could do well with this, but we'll have to wait and see. We also thought ESPN would do well but they sure didn't."

Cingular Wireless is expected to be the first US carrier to offer the iPhone, although that has not yet been confirmed by the two companies.

Source: Wireless Week