iPhone going for the market and iPod Touch really is just an iPod?

Two of the largest topics on the net since Wednesday, iPod Touch & iPhone price cuts, and I have not written anything about them yet.

What comes to the price cut on iPhone, I don't see the logic. Actually Mike Mace really sums it up nicely, you don't do a cut like this if you have not either over estimated demand or are afraid of something else. It just creates too many complications to your buyers, channels, and partners. Or could it be that Apple thinks they can go for a substantially larger share of the market and now is the right time to just push forward with full steam? Maybe, but I am with Mike on this one.

What comes to the iPod Touch, it looks like a great, great media device. It looks beautiful and provides intuitive access to the content Apple wants you to have, brilliant. But the shortcomings of the device are also quite clear, with most likely a lighter processor than iPhone (hence the dropping of google maps), still no good input methods playing out good access to chatting and mails, and at the end not very extensive storage space for a media device. Touch will have it's buyers and enthusiasts (might even count me into this group) but at the end of the day, it really is an iPod with Wifi.

Jeffrey McManus actually has a good post on how iPod Touch will prove to be a blessing for the developer ecosystem around iPhone. Same Webkit, same capabilities but a lot lower cost of entry (300 dollars compared to 2000 dollars). This will make it possible for the individual developers to have their cheap development board, and do more casual hacking/innovative prototyping for iPhone.

At the end of the day, this might even benefit Safari's world dominance plans, as their mobile development environment just got a lot cheaper and that is the route they seem to be taking to break into the desktop browsing war.