Speculation has been raging for weeks that Apple will announce some kind of phone/iPod device tomorrow at the start of the MacWorld conference. You have to take Apple speculation with a grain of salt, since so many writers tend to have some kind of agenda with Apple. Just weeks before Christmas, journalists were writing excitedly that the famed iPod and the iTunes Store were in steep decline, citing suspect data that supposedly showed iTunes sales had dropped drastically.
Two days after Christmas, the media was full of stories about how the iTunes store buckled under the load as millions of iPod owners and iTunes gift card recipients tried to buy music. In the run up to Christmas, iPod accessories like chargers and cases outsold rival MP3 players on Amazon.
So tomorrow we may (or may not) see another Apple device that could, um, upset the apple cart. An Apple-branded phone with iPod and iTunes integration would be popular, but would be competing on a very crowded field. However, some analysts believe Apple may introduce something entirely different: a handheld pocket computer running the full OS X operating system that also doubles as a phone and an iPod. There is not much hard data to support that, but it is the kind of device that would change everything, just as the iMac and the iPod did. Tomorrow may be an interesting day.