Phone competitors aren’t likely to be happy about the iPhone's arrival but worldwide mobile carriers are lining up.

It’s going to happen later than most people originally expected, particularly if you live out Asia way but Apple’s iPhone will do for the mobile cellphone market what the iPod could have done for the music industry.

The iPod came along and shot everyone to bits with its style and its market acceptance. The numbers of people wearing those little white earbuds would have been a marketer’s dream but the problem for the music industry was that it just wasn’t ready to jump on board and ride the wave of excitement the iPod brought to music.

Instead, fighting it tooth and nail, the music industry gave up a huge slice of the action back to Apple in the form of its iTunes store. So instead of the record labels getting in on the fun, Apple not only raked in the cash from selling iPods, it had to buy larger trucks to haul it away when it started selling songs on its iTunes website.

You rarely find synergy of that calibre in any market these days.

Well, now Apple is ready to jump into the mobile cellphone market and while cellphone manufacturers will be eyeing nervously how well the iPhone does in sales, this time Apple will have mobile carriers lining up to jump on the back of the iPhone’s coat tails, selling mobile cellphone plans to every iPhone they can get their hands on.

In the US, Apple stores and AT&T’s Cingular will get the glory of hooking up iPhones to the mobile network however its expected that phone companies around the world will be waiting to see how the US experience pans out. If it performs as everyone suspects, they’ll be falling over themselves to grab a slice of the action.

Steve Jobs made it clear from the get-go that he expects big things of the iPhone – 10million units sold by the end of 2008 seems like a big target but given the worldwide phone market is about to reach 1billion sales in a year, 1% for what will be the most talked about phone release of the year doesn’t actually seem all that big.

Unlike Nokia or Sony Ericsson, Apple has its fan base all lined up ready to buy the iPhone as soon as it becomes available and given Apple has already sold 100million iPods, it’s a safe bet 10% of Apple’s current existing iPod client base will be happy to come back again.

The iPhone offers three products in one – digital camera, mobile cellphone and multimedia player. Granted the two-megapixel camera is probably the weakest feature but given the price tags expected - $US499 for the 4GB model and $US599 for the 8GB unit – there’ll still be enough value for even skeptics to at least give it a thought.

Market buzz is a big thing and Apple has shown it knows how to create that in spades. With no new iPod having been released for some time, Apple fans have had nothing major to spend their cash on and with its big widescreen ready to handle video playback, it’s hard to see the iPhone being anything but a raging success.