The following was my response since I couldn’t let Jared have all the fun. This question was asked a few days ago on the Adaptive Path blog.

It’s a broad question, but I think it’s really about whether Apple can launch a successful music phone. The iPod is the perfect music player and people are cheering Apple in hopes to get the perfect phone.

The current industry model of carriers and OEMs partnering to create a compelling music phone has had pretty limited success — for example, even though the Motorola ROKR partnered with Cingular to bring Apple’s iTunes and was marketed in unprecedented ways it was what basically a flop by Motorola’s standards because it failed on it’s primary promise to be a music phone. (Engadget reported that 1 in 6 ROKRs got returned). That carrie