• Wall Street Journal (registration required), Tuesday, January 9, 2007 12 PM

As Steve Jobs takes the floor at Macworld today, there is rampant speculation that he will announce the development of "iPhone," a combination iPod/cell phone that would be partnered with Cingular Wireless. Such a move would put Mac into the hands of hundreds of millions of people who have cell phones compared to the 70 million iPods out there.

Apple could also outline its plans to enter the interactive television business with a product code-named iTV. Such is the speculation that financial analysts are warning that an iPhone no-show could be viewed negatively by investors. There is a growing sense in the financial community that Apple will need to enter potentially big new categories, like cell phones and television set-top boxes, to keep up the momentum started by the iPod.

For its part, Cingular is betting that music phones will help it attract new subscribers. In November, Cingular Wireless launched a music service with some of the biggest online music services, allowing phone users to transfer music acquired from "all you can eat" subscription services from personal computers to music phones.

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