high end , data driven phones have traditionally only been for business users. i don’t think thats who apple is targeting.. consumers are going to start using data services, and they are going to want high end devices to access them. they intend to create the market segment, not attack the existing (business) ones.

the carrier argument is true, but only in the US. Outside the US, most phones are not sold through the carrier. which explains why the first phone is GSM.

apple basically did a restart of their computer business when jobs came back. they essentially had to “win every sale”, converting pc users to mac users.. they’ve shown it can be done, with a sufficiently differentiated product.