So yesterday afternoon I was bantering with a friend of mine, who works at Yahoo, about the iPhone and what each of us thinks about the device, etc. As we were dinging its shortcomings the subject of third party software came up and whether Apple will ultimately open the platform up to software developers. He told me something interesting - not only is it possible, but apparently Yahoo is working (with Apple’s support) to bring its mobile services application, called Yahoo Go, to iPhone.

My initial reaction was that he was referring to a Safari web based app. Nope! According to him this is a native home screen application, and it’s being tested right now by the mobile team at Yahoo. Gah!

Now, I care as much about Yahoo Go as I do a bowl of leftover oatmeal. It was the revelation that somewhere in the world, outside of Cupertino, applications for iPhone are being developed and tested that had my ears standing.

This opened more questions that my friend had no answer for, namely whether development will be open to all developers or merely those hand picked by Apple? All I got back was a firm “don’t know. I only know we have an app in development now, and we’re working with Apple on services.” So there you have it. Will there be an SDK for developers…or will Apple only allow developers into its tent that it deems worthy of the Blessings of Jobs?

As much as I hate to say this, I think the latter will be the case rather than the former. My hunch is that Apple will erect guard towers around iPhone, and limit platform development. We’ll have to wait and see how this shakes out.