Apple - Now A Phone Company?

I know there are plenty of people out there who think Apple get too much fanboy credit but the iPhone story really bears scrutiny.  The latest financials allow Steve Jobs to claim that his company, 'is the third-biggest maker of cellphones in the world by revenue, after Nokia and Samsung.'  And the cash story is just as impressive : 'In the quarter ended in September, Apple said iPhone sales represented 39 percent of the company’s $11.6 billion in revenue. That means Apple sold $4.5 billion worth of iPhones in the quarter.'  Which also means it's selling more phones than computers, although the distinction hardly seems worth making.  For marketeers it's a great story, not so much as a campaign, but because the iPhone has created a new consumer marketplace populated by groovy, young folk.  The bigger trend still is that that companies are now building devices that are successful not because of the software they have on board, but because of the way they access software and data on other devices, or the web.  Also see Howard Stringer, Sony's Grand Fromage, on the subject here at about 16.40.  Again, its seems, (degrees of) openness wins.