The intelligence firm's director of mobility, Shiv Bakhshi, released a bit of analysis earlier this week that bears some mentioning if only for the fact that it's less about the phone and more about its effect on the mobile market.

Yes, Bakhshi does the standard weighing of strengths and limitations, and like many others, ultimately finds that there is much to celebrate with Apple's new device. Fine.

What's interesting, though, is that he seems most excited about the effect it will have on the U.S. mobile phone industry, concluding that the overall appeal of the iPhone isn't about one feature or design aspect, but rather "the complete ensemble"--that is to say, it's promise.

Hey, abstraction can be a lovely thing. Isn't that what gets people excited about technology in the first place? Thankfully, Bakhshi keeps his analysis grounded and abstains from any flights of fancy.

Indeed, even after all the pre-release hype and well-publicized limitations--including the lack of side-loading memory, the inability to use the phone as a hard drive, as well as the myriad activation glitches--Bakhshi says the iPhone nevertheless establishes Apple as an official mobile phone vendor; going so far as to suggest that the company could fundamentally change the structural relationship between mobile operators and device vendors, tilting the balance in favor of the latter. This excites him.

Find out why after the jump.

Bakhshi's argument is interesting--especially if you come to it after reading David Pogue's recent post about U.S. carrier's being 'calcified.'

"The insistence by Apple that even activation be routed through iTunes must give Nokia (which has struggled in the U.S.) heart that it, too, can someday overcome the operator bottleneck and go directly to consumers," Bakhshi notes.

"To date, mobile operators have dictated connectivity feature built into mobile devices," he added. "Motorola and Nokia have refrained from offering dual mode phones under pressure from operators. The iPhone could change all that."

Even at this early stage, things have started to swing in that direction. While not cited in Bakhshi's commentary, Nokia, the world's largest mobile phone manufacturer, announced in June it will be selling its E-series smartphones directly to U.S. consumers and businesses as unlocked devices, bypassing both Cingular and T-Mobile.

As PC Magazine's Sascha Segan notes, that announcement followed AT&T's decision to kick the E62, the only E-series model sold by a U.S. wireless carrier, off of its roster.

And while Nokia's E-series business and N-series multimedia phones have typically been very successful in Europe, the company has had a hard time getting U.S. carriers--including AT&T and T-Mobile--to pay attention to the series. It's a problem other phone manufacturers are familiar with as well.

Bakhshi says the popularity of the Apple's new phone could very well spark more of these moves by vendors, many of whom will also start selling directly to the consumers themselves, ignoring carriers altogether.

In terms of competition, Bakhshi concludes that, again, the iPhone will actually have a positive impact on companies such as Nokia, "resulting in cooler designs, advanced features, and compressed replacement cycles."

In his words: "[The iPhone] lifts mobile phones out of their utilitarian frame of reference and situates them even more in a fashion frame of reference--fundamentally altering the price calculus for high-end mobile devices."

At the same time, Bakhshi doesn't see Apple's new phone representing much of a threat to other smartphone makers in terms of market share or unit sales, saying that even if Apple meets its stated goal of 10 million units by the end of 2008, that fact will have little effect on the overall size of the mobile phone market--which by then may reach 1.2 billion units.

"This is because the iPhone is likely to grow the size of the 'smartphone' segment, a sub-set of the mobile phone market," Bakhshi believes.

But it's not just the vendors who will see positive results from iPhone, Bakhshi said. According to IDC, AT&T will also benefit from being the sole iPhone carrier, and will likely attract a sizeable number of subscribers from rival networks. He already points to anecdotal evidence that suggests the carrier could gain between 40 and 60 percent of iPhone subscribers from rival networks, with T-Mobile and Sprint being the most susceptible targets.

Then there's the bottom line. "Considering that each iPhone subscriber--whether a new add or an existing AT&T subscriber--brings AT&T an extra $20 per month, the iPhone could prove to be a significant money spinner for AT&T," Bakhshi said.

As Bakhshi observes, the iPhone in particular is debuting at a time when there are more than 2.3 billion mobile subscribers and, at a conservative estimate, more than a quarter of a billion smartphone users. In this light, he ultimately sees the phone not as a threat to any one carrier or vendor, but rather as a sorely need bolt of lightning that has the potential to reinvigorate the mobile industry as a whole.

Here's to hoping he's right.