Apple delays release of Mac OSX Leopard

How the times have changed ! In an earlier avatar, the Apple business revolved solely around its computers and new versions of its OS. No longer. In yet another affirmation of how strong the iPod related business is, Apple announced Thursday April 12th that the release of its new OSX Leopard has been delayed till October due to having to divert key engineering resources from development of the Leopard platform to the iPhone in order to make sure that the iPhone meets its late June target.
Now the release of the Leopard is of strategic importance to Apple. It is widely rumoured to be Apple's answer to Vista, promising better features in terms of user interface, better running of Windows applications, and much better integration with the Intel chips that are the power behind the new Mac machines. But, and this seems to be a harbringer of the overall importance of the mobile platform vs. the desktop computing platform, the importance of bringing the iPhone to the market is stronger.
The iPhone is hugely important for Apple. All the demos so far have promised an extremely state-of-the art device, running on the OSX platform. The excellent screen, easy to use human controls, all those are the inducements offered by Apple in order to induce consumers to move to a expensive device. In addition, for Apple, the iPhone, by virtue of its entry into the phone market, promises to open a massive and rapidly expanding market set to deliver increasing financial returns to Apple in the future.
This will have an impact though. Software companies that deliver consumer software which also works on the Mac, will be severly impacted since the general perception was that Leopard will be released in June, and with this delay, software development on those applications will be badly affected.