iPhone, App Store, and the Future of Cell Phones

Kevin Maney writes: As the iPhone roils the seas today mostly because it looks cool and works elegantly, those aren't the chief reasons the iPhone points to the future of cell phones. For that, you have to get on your iPhone and navigate to Apple's App Store.

The very idea is revolutionary for cell phones: that you can download software from hundreds of developers and customize your phone. It makes the cell phone experience start to be something like the one you get on your laptop connected to the Internet. Certainly not nearly as open yet, but going in the right direction.

This is what Google is after with its Android project and its attempts to pry open wireless networks so they work more like the open Internet. Eventually any phone should be able to download and run any piece of software. (Of course, the software has to be written to run on that phone's operating system.) You should be able to decide what contact manager you use, which photo editor, which instant messaging client and so on.

The giant cell carriers -- Verizon Wireless and AT&T -- aren't going to go there easily. They make too much money tightly controlling access to their phones. The iPhone is pushing AT&T further toward openness than ever before. Sprint is the only major U.S. carrier that has signed on to work with Google's Android and Open Handset Alliance. The other day, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse told me: "The more open we can be, we're going to attract more applications to our platforms, which means we'll attract more users, and so this is a way of differentiating." So maybe Sprint will dive further into openness than the others.

My guess is that three years from now, the experience of owning a cell phone will be a whole lot more like the experience of owning a computer.