When the iPhone was announced, Steve Jobs indicated that the phone would be a closed system. So, if there were going to be additional applications added to the iPhone, Apple was going to be the one who provided them. Many critics panned this announcement saying this would prevent the iPhone from making any dents in the corporate market, currently dominated by RIM.

In an interesting interview in the Seattle Times with Glenn Lurie, the guy from ATT in charge of the iPhone, he revealed Google Apps would be available as a “widget” on the iPhone.

There are other things — you have the widgets, some of the Google applications that are coming — there are just so many things here that the price will not be an issue.

The interesting thing of this quote is that not only will some of not all Google Apps be available on the iPhone, but other widgets will be made available. I have always contended that while the system may not be as wide open and Palm where anyone can release apps, it will be open to a certain extent where niche applications will be able to added to the iPhone.

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