Apple introduced a number of products at Macworld besides the iPhone - most notably Apple TV – yesterday, but the overwhelming star of Steve Jobs’ keynote address was undoubtedly the new smartphone. In fact, the iPhone appears to be primarily responsible for sending the company's stock up by over 8 percent - and rising.

Apple's stock value has just topped $97.

Stock values for Apple's new smartphone competitors, however, took a turn in the opposite direction. Palm, Research In Motion (RIM), Nokia, Samsung and LG Electronics' all fell due to the iPhone announcement.

For example, Palm stock fell from $14.75 at the time of Steve Jobs' presentation to $13.92 at opening this morning, while RIM felt the wrath of iPhone even more strongly, losing about 8 percent of its value – dropping $12.82 to $154.01.

What’s in a Name?
In related news, Apple is about to reach an agreement with Cisco to acquire the rights to the iPhone name, explaining why the company could still use it, even after Cisco subsidiary Linksys launched products under the iPhone brand last month.

Unlike Apple's iPhone - a true smartphone (and more) - Linksys used iPhone to denote a new line of VoIP handsets.

Long before yesterday’s announcement, most people referred to a possible Apple-phone as an iPhone. It would have been disappointing, if not confusing, had Apple had to go with another name.

Update: Cisco has filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California against Apple, seeking to prevent Apple from infringing upon the iPhone trademark.

"Cisco entered into negotiations with Apple in good faith after Apple repeatedly asked permission to use Cisco's iPhone name," said Mark Chandler, senior vice president and general counsel, Cisco. "There is no doubt that Apple's new phone is very exciting, but they should not be using our trademark without our permission.

"Today's iPhone is not tomorrow's iPhone. The potential for convergence of the home phone, cell phone, work phone and PC is limitless, which is why it is so important for us to protect our brand," Chandler added.

iPhones Place in the Smartphone Market
According to market research firm M:Metrics, for the three-month average ending in November, there were 6,153,113 smartphone users in the U.S.: 2,000,452 with Windows Mobile devices, 1,759,801 with BlackBerrys, 1,723,825 with Palms, and 669,035 with Symbian handsets.

M:Metrics likes how Apple made the iPhone a full-blown smartphone and not just a hybrid of an iPod and a mobile phone, which it seems to have done amazingly well, nonetheless. (When are we going to see the iPhone's new full-size touchscreen and Multi-touch technology in a standard iPod?)

“The decision to design the iPhone with a smartphone orientation catapults Apple into the mobile computing business and squarely against Microsoft and the Nokia NSeries," explained M:Metrics VP and senior analyst John Jackson to PDAStreet.

"Given the profusion of music-centric devices being launched by every OEM, an unsubsidized, Apple musicphone that costs twice as much as competing models would be a challenging task for even Steve Jobs," Jackson added. "The incarnation of the iPhone that was launched yesterday is much more appealing, as demand for smartphones is steadily growing, and now Mac enthusiasts can finally get their hands on the seminal Apple mobile device.”

While the feature-set of the iPhone is – to put it mildly – impressive, and the design unique, if not revolutionary, it is likely that the device won’t set the world on fire when it is released in June as the iPod did several years ago.

This is due to the fact that the smartphone and cell phone market is far more mature and established than MP3 players were back in 2001, and because Apple doesn’t have the same established carrier connections of most cell phone vendors.

Market research firm Informa Telecoms & Media cites that Apple sold 67.6 million iPods between late 2001 and September 2006. This total is less than Nokia's quarterly phone shipments last year.

Apple will also have to learn to compromise and leave some of the decision making about how the iPhone is marketed to its operator partners. It seems to have done this with Cingular in the U.S. But that’s one carrier – even if it is the largest in this country – in only one market.

By launching with only one carrier, Informa Telecoms & Media said Apple would get a chance to scale iPhone production, however.

Then there is the cost of the smartphone, which is a somewhat high $499 for the 4GB model and $599 for the 8 GB version. All other smartphone makers offer smartphones well below that price, in the $200 range, in fact.

The question is whether all that’s good and exciting about the iPhone will draw in customers who would otherwise go for mid-range models (like the Treo 680, E62 and BlackBerry Pearl) from Apple competitors?

Not likely. The cost of the iPhone is simply too high.

Also, the lack of 3G, which is slated to be added later, may hinder the iPhone’s ability to capture many high-end customers, especially when it ships in Europe.

"Although the iPhone offers fast data download speeds over Wi-Fi, its quadband EDGE cellular connectivity is more suited to North America than Europe where W-CDMA is widely deployed," according to Informa Telecoms & Media principal analyst David McQueen. "Thus a 3G version of the device would be more suited to the iPhone’s late 2007 launch in the European market."

Lastly, RIM isn’t in any danger of losing too much if any of its dominant market share in the prosumer and enterprise market - where secure e-mail and messaging rule – to the iPhone when it ships in June.

Although the iPhone, like all smartphones, is an e-mail device, with a unique ‘push’ e-mail deal with Yahoo! and, according to Apple, support for Rich HTML e-mail, and all IMAP or POP3-based e-mail services, there’s still the question of compatibility with the major enterprise mail servers; such as Exchange, Lotus Domino, and Novell GroupWare.

"If Apple can secure even a small percentage of what Informa Telecoms & Media forecasts will be a 1.06 billion unit handset market in 2007, this would have a substantial impact to the company’s bottom line," added McQueen.

Apple's goal is to capture 1 percent of the cell phone market in 2008, which would translate into 10 million units sold.

In spite of the caveats listed above, Apple just might be able to do that, but a diversification of the iPhone line (e.g. lower-cost models) can only help, as it is essential to the device’s long-term prospects.

At the least, the iPhone's uniqueness and innovative features will make it a must-have item for those who can afford it when it is released in June.

For more analysis on the impact of the iPhone, see here.