Why is the platform so important.
The nature of technology is to always change and evolve. For many years the ability of small independent application developers to produce software that could be easily seen used and available for the general population was extremely difficult. The arena of software development was the domain of large multinational companies. Now in 2008 their is a another change thanks in part to the SDK provided by apple for their mobile platform, specifically at the time of writing the iPhone and iPod touch. These devices I feel will be known as the catalyst for bring handheld computing into the hands of the public.
Why is this so important? As devices become a part of daily life, and the ability to have at arms reach everything we need to gather maintain and communicate with the world in every format possible (video, voice, written), we will no longer be tethered to a desk. Freedom is in mobility, and the ability to do what you want when you want it.
How is this important to small independent developers. With the scale of the devices and the SDK made available from Apple, we are able to easily produce small niche software that does one thing, and does that thing well. A small team or a single developer now has the opportunity to make software for anyone anywhere that provides a service. This will make the platform so useful to so many people in so many ways that growth will happen, for the developer, the platform and the devices will be everywhere.