I was at Apple’s WWDC keynote this morning, which has been covered extensively elsewhere - see TechCrunch for an example. The event and the application demonstrations there only confirmed my belief that the iPhone SDK is transformative, shifting the iPhone from a nifty smartphone to a full-fledged computing platform. Particularly interesting (to me) were the applications that could’ve been done within the iPhone’s Safari browser, but weren’t - applications by eBay, TypePad, and the Associated Press. All of these were written in Objective-C to take advantage of the iPhone SDK’s advanced features. All of them will be available for free. I expect all of them will be ridiculously popular - the eBay and TypePad applications are a must-use for iPhone owners that use their existing web-based services, and the Associated Press applications presents intuitive new ways to access information on the fly.

I expect many more web applications to follow, creating web-plus-SDK applications that combine online content with the iPhone’s advanced features. As these web-plus-SDK applications grow, they’re going to want to optimize, and to optimize they’re going to need good analytics. That’s where Pinch Media can help. Just like an SDK application can do more than a web application, Pinch Media’s SDK-based analytics can do more than web analytics. (Sign up to get started today.)

I also expect many of these web-plus-SDK applications to be as dependent on network effects as their desktop-browser-based parents. For social networking, reviews, messaging - for any application that depends on the contributions of its userbase - the only sane price point is ‘free’. The same goes for applications built solely for mobile. Loopt, a social network for mobile users, also presented its upcoming iPhone application today - and just like the others, it will also be available for free.

As these applications grow, they’re also going to need revenue models - revenue models that go beyond the paid download. There are many possibilities here, but I suspect many will learn from more traditional web applications, and offer free content accompanied by advertising. Just like web-plus-SDK applications, web-plus-SDK advertising has the potential to be so much more than solely web-based advertising. Here, Pinch Media can also help - contact us today to discuss our advertising beta program, developed specifically for the iPhone SDK.