The good news is that with the announcement of Skype support on the iPhone via the Safari browser, the openness of Internet technology seems to have leaked into the iPhone. This breaks up attempts at traditional exclusivity and monopolism and replaces them with openness and innovation. Whether by design or by oversight, the first chink in the armor is the delivery of voice services in a way that keeps money out of the pockets of carriers.

There will be lots of others coming soon.

The details

When Apple released the iPhone, they did it in conjunction with an exclusive carrier. They needed the infrastructure, and they needed someone to build the network side of their Visual Voicemail. So they got AT&T, and in return AT&T got the iPhone.

But this isn’t going to stick. The first blow to iPhone exclusivity came yesterday from Shape Services. By browsing to http://skypeforiphone.com/ an iPhone user can run Skype via the web browser built into the phone.

It works on a normal data connection (but the cost for data services could be awful.)

But here’s the important bit: it works with built-in Wifi, which means all of the money AT&T would make from calls when you’re in a Wifi zone could potentially go away. And with Wifi blanketing the world (fueled by collaborative hotspots and civic initiatives) that’s a lot of lost revenue. As in, “gee, no phone calls from San Francisco this month.”

One wonders whether Apple foresaw this when it announced that apps for the iPhone would be built through the Safari web browser. At first there was a huge backlash against the company for locking the phone itself (and a race to try and break it.) But now, people seem to be coming around to the world of apps in browsers. It’s a real finesse for Apple, since it gets people off the operating system and onto the Internet, levelling the playing field to a degree in their rivalry with Microsoft.

More details after the jump.

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