The summer of the iPhone – now with YouTube

2007 will surely be written into the tech history books as the summer of the iPhone. Seldom has a new product been surrounded with so much hype and expectations. Now – less that two weeks ahead of the magic launch-date June 29 – Steve Jobs and his team delivers back-to-back news about new features and design of the precious iPhone to come.

Today YouTube made it to the iPhone-headlines. Apple announced that iPhone users will be able to enjoy YouTube’s originally-created content. A new Apple-designed application on iPhone will wirelessly stream YouTube’s content to iPhone over Wi-Fi or EDGE networks and play it on iPhone’s 3.5 inch display.

The news was reported by many bloggers (see Techmeme), news-sources and Caroline McCarthy at cNet.com.
At Engadget Paul Miller describes the new function as “the iPhone mystery app”. Sure, it might not be GPS or anything useful like that, but Apple seems to be aware of our addiction and is happy to oblige, he writes.

So what are the issues with streaming YouTube-content into the iPhone? The key questions, according to JupiterResearch’s Michael Gartenberg, is how well the experience transfers from the PC to these new screens and how well the video will perform, especially over the iPhones 2G network. But at IP Democracy Cynthia Brumfield is confused: “I get that the videos will be viewable via Wi-Fi, but EDGE? That’s the wireless standard that partner AT&T deploys. And AT&T has a hard and fast rule: no streaming video on its handsets that it doesn’t specifically condone,” she writes asking if Apple’s announcement means that AT&T is changing its ban on streamed video – or if it means that YouTube’s videos meet AT&T’s wireless content standard or if AT&T is a partner in this effort?

Several questions needs to be answered. Meanwhile the hype is accelerating and people start lining up for June 29. We’re in line too – at PodTech we know that mobile online videos will only grow bigger in the future.

By Tina Magnergard Bjers and John Furrier

PS. The announcement that YouTube also is live on Apple TV now got a bit overshadowed by the iPhone-story – another sign that this summer belongs to the iPhone.