Mobile Entertainment

Just to be clear, this was arguably the world's most prestigious pink business daily getting all hot and bothered about one phone that may or may not be launched by one operator some time in the next 12 months.

Ordinarily that's an utter non-story, even for the often feverish mobile telecoms trade press.Ten days later we're still none the wiser as to whether O2 won the deal but the speculation continues. That's the power of the iPhone zeitgeist and it's Apple's most potent weapon.

Prior to the US iPhone launch many commentators predicted that the real impact of the device would be measured in how the established manufacturers reacted to its design and functionality rather than the number of units it shifted (Apple plans to sell 10m in 18 months while Sony Ericsson has just sold 25m handsets in one quarter). Others asserted even that wouldn't matter - there's nothing that Apple could think of that the techies at Nokia, Moto or Sony Ericsson couldn't.

As usual the truth is somewhere in between. It would be stupid in any walk of life or industry to ignore what others around you are doing.

Certainly the number of press releases we've received here in the last two weeks from companies riding the iPhone wave has been quite incredible. Like anything that's flavour of the month (climate change, for example) a whole mini industry has sprung up around it. There's also lot's of talk about the impact of 'side-loading' content onto phones iPod/iPhone-style as opposed to OTA delivery (in fact this is the topic of discussion by our editorial board in the upcoming August edition of ME).

If news of Nokia's 8GB memory 'upgrade' for the N95 is true, it is no doubt intended as a bit of an iPhone spoiler - Apple's device currently comes in 4GB and 8GB flavours. Elsewhere, devices are already in the market for the likes of LG with sexy touch screen interfaces.

So the iPhone's influence is already manifest. But what will be really interesting to see is how much Apple learns back from the mobile industry once the iPhone has spent some quality time in the real world in real people's pockets.