“Flash forward to the present, and we are suddenly on the cusp of a game-changing event; one that I believe kicks the door open for 3D and VR apps to become mainstream. I am talking about the release of iPhone OS version 3.0.”
That’s a quote from Mark Sigal taken from a recently published O’Reilly Radar. Mark is singing one of our favorite songs: Real VR going mainstream in the marketplace. He notes that the next version of the iPhone OS (and the underlying SDK) will allow third-party hardware accessory makers to build external hardware accessory offerings that take advantage of the software, service and hardware capabilities of the iPhone and iPod touch platforms.
Specifically, Mark points out that Apple is opening up the 30-pin connector at the base of the iPhone and iPod touch such that hardware accessory makers can create a software layer that is optimized to take advantage of the capabilities of the hardware in a way that cobbles together with and extends the capabilities of the iPhone Platform. Mark also notes that Bluetooth-accessible hardware accessories can also take advantage of these new capabilities.
What this means, says Sigal, is a rebirth of hardware-based innovation, a segment that Apple has historically played a leading role in fostering, first with postscript-based printing, then with Appletalk networking (which pre-dates Ethernet) and now with Mobile Broadband Computing.
Look at it this way, he says: Very soon, hardware accessory makers will be able to leverage the same tools and marketplace functions that have resulted in more than 35K applications being built and more than 1 billion apps downloaded, all the while tapping into a 37 million device global footprint.
What’s that worth? Consider this: The iPod accessory business itself is already a $2B market, and there has really been no such thing as “software value-add” to the hardware accessory itself. With iPhone 3.0, this changes. That’s a big deal.
I suspect analysts will be re-examining their financial models for Apple and their partners (particularly Nvidia) in the near future as the reality of what the company is doing in the Real VR space begins to sink in.
