The rumors are flying, thicker than ever: will there be an actual Apple iPhone?

The current round of rumors started with an Australian report citing executives from BenQ and several financial firms as saying that some Taiwanese manufacturers were competing to build the device. That was followed by a virtual scrum of analysts falling all over each other to predict Apple's move: first a VisionGain analyst saying the iPhone would appear on new wireless carrier Helio (via MobileTracker) and then a somewhat confused report on our own PCMag.com from Rethink Research, predicting that Apple will work with Intel, an Asian manufacturer, and existing carriers to build the phone.

I want to see an iPhone as badly as everyone else, and not just because I sit near "MacBook Pro" Cisco Cheng, "Intel Core Duo" Joel Santo Domingo and "iPod Hi-Fi" Mike Kobrin. Phones generally have hideous interfaces for anything beyond basic voice calling, and the market could do with a big dose of that old Apple magic for making things intuitive and easy-to-use. An Appl-ization trend on mobile phone interfaces, if it bleeds over to other manufacturers, could really be a shot in the arm for high-end data services that right now only geeks bother to learn how to use.

It wouldn't take innovative new features for an iPhone to be a hit. It would just take unlocking the features high-end phones now have, through an attractive, easy-to-use interface that always works.

I have no idea whether Apple will actually release a phone -- their smoke is opaque to me -- but I doubt they'll do it at next week's CTIA trade show. I also think they'll have to establish their own virtual carrier, or MVNO, like ESPN Mobile. (For global markets, the phone would probably be GSM, so Cingular and T-Mobile subscribers would be able to use it with their existing SIM cards.) The Motorola ROKR debacle shows that Apple doesn't play well with others: that phone was held up for a year in bickering between Motorola, Apple and Cingular, and ended up looking like the product of too many hideous compromises. Apple's strategy has always been to deliver a complete experience, and I don't see why they'd settle for anything less with the iPhone.