Judgment made on January 7, 2009: Coming soon, but alas, this prediction failed to come true for Apple fans last year, as our community correctly guessed. -- The Industry Standard

Original prediction: The New York Times has it that Apple is negotiating with major music labels to see if it can "sell songs from its iTunes store directly to iPhones over the cell-phone broadband network. With the next generation of phone expected to use much faster 3G technology, this is technically feasible."

MG Siegler explains that "while current iPhone owners are able to access the store when they are on a Wi-Fi connection, with the addition of the mobile broadband 3G technology in the next iteration of the device, it should make it so people can buy music anytime, anywhere. Something like that could certainly make for a nice slogan when Jobs takes the stage in June."

While this wasn't announced publicly at WWDC in June, it still seems a viable strategy for Apple to pursue as the 3G iPhone nears store shelves this summer.

This is a prediction that Apple will sell the entire iTunes music library on the mobile version of iTunes that runs on the 3G iPhone (i.e. without the need of a Wi-Fi connection). This will be judged favorably if an official announcement by Apple stating the same is released (even if for a future date outside the scope of this prediction), or as reported and confirmed in the mainstream media. If an announcement of this strategy, or the strategy itself, is not confirmed by the end of 2008, this prediction will fail.