In a complete 360 from Steve Jobs previous statements, Apple will be releasing an official 3rd party SDK in February 2008 for the iPod touch and the iPhone. Apple’s previous policy cited AT&Ts network as being too fragile for 3rd party apps to safely exist on. I think it would be fair to credit the iPhone/iPod dev teams and the 3rd party application makers for this change of heart in Apple, giving them the clear message “If you don’t give us what we want from our devices, we will take it.”

No word yet on how restrictive the SDK will be, but early speculation is that it could be prohibitively locked down in respects to EDGE bandwidth access and memory, again forcing users to jailbreak their device if they want apps that maximize their devices’ potential. I look forward to seeing how this plays out.