Can Mr. Jobs single handedly revolutionize the Wireless Industry? That’s up for debate. Personally I doubt one handset will force a paradigm shift in the mobile ecosystem. However it will have a major influence that will surely shake up an industry where the power is clearly with the carriers. If the iPhone does 1/10th of what the iPod did to the balance of power in the music industry, then get ready for a wild ride.

Canada’s largest wireless carrier, Rogers (and Fido) have already felt the muscle flexing by Apple. In a release last year Apple indicated they would only consider coming to Canada if their carrier partner implemented an unlimited or, as mobile people would say, “all you can eat” data plan. Progress on this issue has been sluggish to say the least, but there are some positive signs.

Apple, the “Teflon” brand that it is, would never allow exorbitant monthly carrier fees to be associated with the darling of all consumer brands or for that matter restrict fun, friendly mobile browsing. Some will argue that the US’s adoption of the unlimited plan is the stronger influencing factor for Canada.

Others are speculating that Rogers couldn’t resist the temptation to latch on to the 800 lbs gorilla. From a brand perspective, with an exclusive partnership with Apple Rogers can distance themselves from the dreaded “dumb pipe” scenario.

What does this mean for marketers?

In a previous post where I discussed the Mobile landscape I outlined the three major areas of Mobile: (1) Mobile Messaging, (2) Mobile Content, which in my opinion is synonymous with downloading and applications), and (3) Mobile Internet (including mobile search).

It clearly impacts mobile internet and mobile content. It affects mobile messaging to a lesser degree. I believe mobile messaging is least affected because the utility of messaging is the immediacy and timeliness, having a cooler handset to read a 136 character message is not going to impact messaging campaigns.

The iPhone and the browsing utility it offers will begin to put to rest the notion of WAP is CRAP. In my opinion the unlimited data plan will do what inter-carrier SMS did for mobile messaging. Get ready for localized search on your phone. Even keeping in mind the iPhone price range will prevent most of us from ever owning one, the other 99% of the handsets out there that don’t have touch screen viewing will still let consumers to hit brand websites, sport and entertainment portals and, most of all, their social networks.

Finally when it comes to content/downloading/applications, the iPhone and Google Android (coming soon to a phone near you) will make the consumer truly mobile – where content, information, entertainment, social networks etc. are served up courtesy of widgets and applications in SDK environments.

All the mobile interactivity you want will soon be in your pocket. Just remember to lock you keypad.