The iPhone will continue to be a success; the rate of adoption is debatable but unstoppable. There will be price cuts and other maneuvers to maintain its distribution momentum, but after the holidays, there will be millions of users. While Apple is its own worst enemy in not making the iPhone a viable business alternative, it will break down barriers to form a not yet existent audience of mobile entertainment consumers. Advertisers will have to learn how to communicate to this new audience in compelling ways.

Google will remain a force in the mobile space with or without its own phone due to the plethora of applications that will be adopted on the iPhone. The brilliant minds at Google may learn from the limitations of Apple’s strategy to create a device that is more amenable to open source innovation and therefore more readily adaptable to business and the convergence of media.

The short-term implications for mobile advertising are very interesting. We will have to use all the current platforms for the time being, but they will become less of a factor as these devices penetrate the market and become more advanced. The long-term implications are by no means dire; they represent a new holistic way to reach the consumer if they are spending more time with a single device.

The challenges are stated above, but if we aren’t excited about the potential, we shouldn’t be doing this for a living.