Kill it how?

(I liked that menacing zombie iPhone image fatalsaint painted in my brain awhile ago )

By the remaining conventional means of measuring a winner or a loser, rate of new sales growth; the iPhone will soon be "dead" as everybody who wants one will eventually have one.

When this occurs anything new may out sell the iPhone on a month to month basis simply out of current user boredom and provider contract churn.

Although Apple did build in some obsolecense with its non-removable battery, this will also open a window for an existing user to try something new when the battery needs to be replaced.

If you mean "dead" as in a new OS will be so special that the majority of current iPhone users will dump a perfectly good phone for a new one then I don't think that will happen either unless the new phone can also do your laundry or suttin'.

The only thing that will cause the iPhone to loose it's initial attractiveness is time and Apple it's own dang self.

Over time, new technologies and new customer expectations will develop and whatever OS is used, it will have to adapt. I don't think we will see any compelling new features developed for the iPhone unless they are developed by Apple exclusively so in that sense the iPhone may already be "dead".

Job's recent "Letter" may have been correct in Adobe's case but it also indicated to some how Apple in the future could treat any new technology that is not developed in house.

Whatever the future brings I don't think the number of partners an OS has will have anything to do with its survival and in this case some may just be hedging their bets.

As gerbick said: "talk is cheap"

WiMAX had a lot of partners too.