Apple announced its cheaper and chapter iPhone on June 9th with a July 11th deliverable date, not to mention plans to roll the iPhone 2.0 out in about 70 countries.

It is a more traditional play than Apple did the first time around. It’s working with the carriers to subsidize the phone and in return it appears for giving up the vig on the revenue stream. That’s probably smart. It will get the iPhone established as the hardware platform worldwide by encouraging carriers to tease subscribers with it and subscribers to adopt it. And it helps fend off copy-cat attacks from the likes of Nokia and Samsung.

To me this increases the odds—still long—that Apple will be the catalyst that releases the pent up value of the mobile ecosystem. They can do that by getting their hardware and software platform distributed widely and encouraging software developers to write apps that work worldwide. They might still have to butt heads with the mobile carriers who can get in the way of applications but they will have far more power to do so if they become the mobile device of choice for many subscribers.

An interesting question is, whether developers will divert effort from Android or continue to see that as a good way to hedge their bets?