Tomorrow Apple is going to provide a public preview into iPhone OS 3.0. Many sources have jumped on the bandwagon of speculating what might be in it.
Most of the suggested features are no brainers, like support for Multimedia Messaging Service, the long awaited Copy & Paste or Tethering, which would allow you to connect your laptop to the Internet through the iPhone’s data connection.
I wonder why nobody seems to have suggested adding native support for micropayment to the iPhone SDK, yet.
With an estimated number of 60+ million customers – which translates to roughly the same number of stored credit cards – Apple could solve the long-standing issue of having no reliable mobile micropayment solution.
Instead of upfront one-time payments when purchasing an application via the App Store, content providers could offer premium content in an on demand model. Think of the fantastic new kind of applications which could be built once we’d have a way to charge customers on a per use basis or based on the type of content/service they access.
Obviously Apple would have to get the security model right and possibly limit to small amounts chargeable via the feature (1-5 US$) but given this is a major new release all of the aspects could be built right into the iPhone Operating System.
This feature alone could be a major differentiator compared to what most of the other upcoming mobile application stores have to offer to their developers as it would be backed by the integrated and trusted shopping experience that iTunes customers are so used to.
It could seriously pave the way for a whole new category of mobile applications.
Talk about being spot on! Good call. Definitely looking forward to seeing what apps will be able to come up with beyond the typical flash game $0.10/extra-item sales.