iPhone gets official release date

engadget_iphone-june-29th.jpgIn case you haven’t been keeping up, on June 29th you can get your iPhone, provided you don’t mind getting stuck with a 2 year contract on a version 1.0 $600 cell phone. Hey, I’ll admit I could be wrong about how well this product will perform in the market, but to exceed my expectations, I think the market will need to be filled with idiots or folks with too much money for their own good.

During an onscreen demonstration of the iPhone in Apple’s sprawling retail store here recently, an employee, clad in a black T-shirt, of course, surprised a potential customer.

Nonplused, the customer stammered, “You mean it’s a cellphone, too?”

Hmmmmmm. My idiots prediction might just be what Jobs is counting on for high market penetration. I guess I could just be wrong due to the cult of Apple that keeps growing. Oh, yeah, there’s also this:

Most analysts believe that Apple will easily exceed its initial goal of selling 10 million phones by the end of next year.

“It will be just 1 percent of the handset market,” said Jagdish Rebello, director of wireless communications research at iSuppli, a market research firm based in El Segundo, Calif. “But it is essentially shifting the balance of power into the hands of the mobile device manufacturers.”

That has a high probability for proving my prediction wrong, too. I could have sworn I read that Jobs was aiming for 10% of the market. Well, I may turn out to be the idiot here – 1% is too easy given the hype surrounding this.

[tags]Official iPhone launch date[/tags]