When Apple’s Steve Jobs announced the iPhone during the Macworld Expo last January, this shocked the whole tech community. It wasn’t so much the announcement of an Apple mobile phone that many found interesting. In fact, word about an Apple cellphone had been running the rumor mill for years! But it was the “iPhone” name itself that caused much eyebrow-raising, because just a few weeks before Apple’s announcement, the buzz has been that network equipment manufacturer Cisco had held the trademark for “iPhone” for quite some time now.

Why the fuss about a name? Apple is known to market its products with an aura of coolness. And Apple is known to design products such that people would love the user interface and styling. With the Mac, for instance, it’s almost as if it’s not just a regular computer one is using–or at least that’s what we believe. This extends to the iPhone, which will be unlike any other current mobile phone, with its multi-touch screen technology, multimedia capabilities, and the excellent UI one would expect from Apple.

Cisco, meanwhile, has been marketing a VoIP phone under the iPhone name, which it relaunched last December. This means Apple’s iPhone would be going head-on-head against Cisco’s iPhone. Never mind that they’re not really competing in the same market (cellular vs. VoIP/WiFi phone). They’re still both phones.

Recently, however, there have been developments in the talks between the two companies for an amicable settlement on the use of the trademark. Cisco has announced that the two companies will be allowed to use the iPhone name.

Cisco® and Apple today announced that they have resolved their dispute involving the “iPhone” trademark. Under the agreement, both companies are free to use the “iPhone” trademark on their products throughout the world. Both companies acknowledge the trademark ownership rights that have been granted, and each side will dismiss any pending actions regarding the trademark. In addition, Cisco and Apple will explore opportunities for interoperability in the areas of security, and consumer and enterprise communications. Other terms of the agreement are confidential.

The “interoperability,” particularly in the area of “consumer and enterprise communications” aspect is what people might be getting excited about. The iPhone, when released to the public sometime this May or June, would initially only work with certain service providers (in the US, it’s Cingular). Does interoperability then mean that the Apple iPhone can also be used as a VoIP phone? The Apple iPhone does have WiFi capabilities, and this can theoretically be taken advantage of.

Still, it’s a far likelihood that Apple’s iPhone will officially support VoIP over WiFi of any kind, much less adopt open standards such as SIP and IAX. So will we be able to use the iPhone with our Asterisk gateways? That’s still a dream for now, but anything’s possible.

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