Latest Phones

Giving his first significant appearance since the Macworld Expo in San Francisco where the iPhone was unveiled, Apple CEO Steve Jobs was interviewed by Walt Mossberg at the D5 “All Things Digital” executive conference in Carlsbad, California. While keeping tight-lipped about any upcoming product releases or changes, Jobs did drop some hints about where Apple’s entertainment devices are headed.

iPhone: Jobs told Mossberg that iPhone is still scheduled to ship in the latter part of June. When asked if that meant the last day of June, Jobs replied “Yeah, probably.”

He also commented on the reasons why AT&T/Cingular was so keen on the iPhone as a catalyst for subscriber adoption: a desire to exploit expensive data networks that haven’t yet seen much useful application and an attempt to establish the first genuinely successful music/phone combination.

When asked why the iPhone doesn’t support 3G, Jobs hedged and said that WiFi (supported by the iPhone) is proliferating so quickly that it may, in a sense, obviate the need for 3G networks.

Jobs also downplayed the ability to purchase media on the iPhone, saying that purchasing items over the airwaves is too costly.

In perhaps the most important statement of the conference, Jobs gave the strongest indication yet that the iPhone may open for third-party application development. He said that while outside development currently represents a potential security and stability debacle, Apple “would like to solve this problem and if you could just be a little more patient with us, we’ll do it.”

Finally, responding to inquiry about the iPhone’s touchscreen keyboard, Jobs told Mossberg that “Once you learn to trust the keyboard, it’s a better keyboard. I’ll bet you dinner that you’ll love it.”