When the iPhone App Store launched last Friday along with the new 3G iPhone, free apps made up 24 percent of the 552 apps available. In other words, the most popular price point was free. The rest of the apps ranged in price from 99 cents to $9.99 and even more. Instead of dictating a uniform price, as he did with music, Steve Jobs let the market decide what price apps should go for. The market is already doing that sorting.
With the iPhone 3G Apple's playing for keeps. Not only is this iPhone's Exchange enterprise support aiming straight for the heart of the business market, but the long-awaited 3rd party application support and App Store means it's no longer just a device, but a viable computing platform. And its 3G network compatibility finally makes the iPhone welcome the world over, especially after Cupertino decided to ditch its non-traditional carrier partnerships in favor of dropping the handset price dramatically. $200? We're still a little stunned.
Blogging through Safari is practically impossible on the iPhone due to the excessive real estate taken up by the keyboard. Native apps have the potential to make the whole ordeal much more manageable, and they could spawn a new trend of bloggers who post while on the road.
It is certainly possible to make money selling software at $5 or $10 a pop, but you have to do significant volume to make it pay. $20-$49/pop can add up pretty quickly (as many successful shareware authors can attest to), but $5-$10/pop requires real volume.
While phishing isn't an uncommon means for scammers to get personal information these days, you don't hear all that often that the scammer gets your info directly from the credit card company. Generally it's a more hi-tech data breach, such as a hacker gaining access to a data center. For one third-party Mac developer, however, his Apple Developer Connection account information was scammed directly out of Apple, and pretty easily at that.

Apple finally let developers know when their iPhone apps will be live on the App Store for users to download and use: around 9 am PST Thursday morning. That, at least, is when the embargo lifts and press can start writing about the specific applications. Presumably the App Store will go live, along with iPhone 2.0 software in general, around that time.
