Analysis of Likely 3G iPhone Components & Consequences

[Entropy]

Yeah it'll probably shake out.

But a lot of developers seem to be doing side projects, just to play around with the tools, possibly put together something they'd want to use on their phones, etc.

Of course. This, by the way, is good.
Then again, the downloads are definitely there as well, iPhone users are checking the store out. I'll quote Steve Jobs
"The App Store is a grand slam, with a staggering 10 million applications downloaded in just three days,"

Speaking of developers and side projects:

In an interview with Shacknews conducted earlier today, legendary Doom developer and id Software co-founder John Carmack expressed regret that his company could not put together an iPhone game in time for today's launch of the iPhone application store.

"I'm really kind of sad about... how things played out outside of our real control on that," said Carmack when asked about id iPhone development. "I'm really bullish on the iPhone market. I think that what they're doing with iTunes, cutting the carriers out of there... it's a great hardware platform.

"It's a market I really want to be in, we just didn't have the resources to go do something for the initial launch."

 

[rendezvous]

iSupply have made estimates of the cost based on a teardown.
Here is a small report with lists of components.

http://www.isuppli.com/news/default.asp?id=9072

 

[wco81]

Games are the top-sellers on the App. store.

sfgate.com/chronicle has an article interviewing publishers who are bullish on the prospects.

Perhaps if it becomes a big games platform, future designs will make more accommodations for games performance.

 

[wco81]

Carmack on iPhone development.

http://www.forbes.com/technology/2008/07/24/doom-iphone-morris-tech-personal-cx_cm_0725doom.html

"The iPhone, as a device, is in the same generation power-wise as the PS2 or Xbox," he says. "The graphics are a little lower but the RAM is a lot higher. … You could easily spend $10 million on an iPhone game, but the market just can't support that yet."

Other key thing compared to other cell phones is storage.

 

[RudeCurve]

ATT/Cingular has had 3G video streaming for 3G phones for awhile now. I don't see why it would be different for iPhone 3G...