While I will never be privy to it, I would be very interested in understanding the terms of the Apple-ATT agreement. No doubt, Apple agreed to prevent the addition of a SIP/VoIP client to the iphone. The addition of such a sanctioned or unsanctioned application would tear a gaping hole in the revenue model of ATT and to a lesser degree Apple, as they most certainly have some form of revenue sharing on cellular contracts.

But as certain as the sun will rise, Apple surely realizes that VoIP will ultimately transform the cellular industry as we understand it. The Apple-ATT exclusive agreement has a life of 5 years. I suspect that Apple could not and would not agree to limit the adoption of VoIP technology on it’s platforms for that entire period; it simply would have been too limiting.
The question then is when will we see the doors open on a SIP client? Apple has stated that it will release a developer SDK in February of ‘08. Will Apple allow developers to release a SIP client.. unlikely. But we will see what will happen on the 1 year anniversary of the iphone. What I expect is that we will see not a “iphone” with SIP capability, but rather some other form of touch-based communicator.

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