This is the one tech issue that has had the world buzzing over the past week. After filtering through hundreds of blog posts, forums,a nd news articles, Headwires brings you a summary of local release information so far:

Availability

The iPhone will be released in 22 countries around the world on the 11th July 2008. Australia is one of those countries, and thanks to time differences, will be one of the first markets in the world where it will be available.
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For those surfing the broad interwebs today may have come across the news of Apple’s new iPhone SDK. This Software Development Kit will finally allow third-party developers (Read: not Apple) to develop applications for the platform without the need to hack the phone. The applications will then have to be approved by an official party (read: Apple) before it can be made available for users to download. The applications can be loaded up on the things via the new App Store feature, and be sideloaded to your iTunes.

Okay, so we don’t (officially) have iPhones yet in Australia, and there was no definite news about a local release. However, an indication of a release soon of a 3G iPhone, which would be much better suited to our market, is that this SDK is due for a version 2.0 release very soon (it’s currently being beta tested). So what, I hear you ask. Well, they way that much software development and upgrades occur, particularly with the Apple crew, is that updates come incrementally and tend not to jump up a full generation until there is a significant change. With the current iPhone user environment at v1.1.4, there would have to be a significant upgrade to the system to warrant a v2.0 so soon (3G, anyone).

Would it be worth importing a current gen iPhone and ‘modifying’ it to work on Australian networks at the moment? It depends. Can you wait six months?

Here in Australia it’s election season. And what would an election be without a series of backflips. Unfortunately for Telstra, they’re not running for office and in line for some lucrative Australian Electoral Commission coin. However, according to a Sky News report, Telstra could in fact be in the prime position to be the host network for the official commercial iPhone launch in Australia. Continue reading…