Apple planning iPhone SDK event March 6
Apple distributed invitations Wednesday morning for “an iPhone software road map” event next week, which means we're finally going to hear details on the plans for an iPhone software development kit. — As you might be aware, next week is March …
Context & Ripple Effects
The March 6 invitation closes a loop opened in October 2007, when Apple said it planned to put an iPhone SDK in developers' hands by February — a deadline that has now visibly slipped into a "software road map" briefing instead of a shipped kit. The syndicated pickup is unusually broad for an invite story: Infinite Loop flags an enterprise angle alongside the SDK, while Byte of the Apple frames the whole thing as "Apple versus RIM: Now it's Game On," reading the event as a direct shot at BlackBerry's developer lock on the corporate market.
The timing matters beyond the calendar. The same day, Tim Cook told the Goldman Sachs Investment Symposium that the iPhone is not tied to a single-carrier model even if exclusivity makes business sense, and a draft wireless bill is threatening the exclusive-carrier arrangement — so Apple is staging its developer-platform reveal against a backdrop of carrier-policy pressure.
First-order effects
- Developers who have been building web-app workarounds since launch finally get a formal answer on native tools, with the SDK itself apparently still pending rather than in hand at the event.
- Enterprise IT buyers get their first official signal that Apple intends to compete for corporate deployments, not just consumer ones.
Second-order effects
- RIM faces a native third-party application push on the iPhone just as it owns the enterprise smartphone market, forcing it to defend its developer and IT-admin relationships.
- Exclusive iPhone carriers such as AT&T watch a week in which both Cook's carrier comments and the draft wireless bill loosen the exclusivity narrative, complicating their negotiating position.
Third-order effects
- If the SDK lands as promised, the iPhone shifts from a closed appliance with web clips to a third-party software platform, making Apple's control of approval and distribution — not the hardware spec sheet — the decisive competitive lever.
- A successful road-map event would cement the invitation-only developer briefing as Apple's recurring mechanism for steering its platform, a template rivals would have to match to keep developers engaged.
The trend: Smartphones are turning from closed carrier-controlled devices into developer platforms, and Apple's event-driven road-map announcements are setting the terms of that transition.