When Apple announced its iPhone partnership with Cingular, I assumed, and hoped as a Verizon user, that the keyboard-free phone would eventually be available through Verizon, just as the Razr had. However, while "movie studios and record labels have bent to Apple...in the end, Apple bent to Cingular with a multi-year, exclusive U.S. contract for an entire line of different iPhone models, Glenn Lurie, Cingular's president of national distribution, told journalists at the Consumer Electronics Show," Sascha Segan reports for PC Magazine.

So with the famous iPhone firmly tied up with Cingular for the foreseeable future, am I seriously considering changing my wireless phone provider so I can be one of the first to snatch the iPhone? Absolutely! The phone will be sold exclusively through Apple and Cingular stores and Apple is also free to go to "big-box stores" such as Target and Wal-Mart.

And contrary to Bloomberg's mixed assessment of the iPhone, I predict that many non-Cingular users may make the switch come this June. Apple's consumer loyalty does not bode well for cell phone providers, except perhaps for one -- AT&T's Cingular. Or maybe not. Newsweek's Steven Levy wonders if Cingular's service may not be up to handling iPhone's many applications.

"'You don't want your phone to be an open platform,'" meaning that anyone can write applications for it and potentially gum up the provider's network,' says Jobs, addressing the issue. "'You need it to work when you need it to work. Cingular doesn't want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up.'"