expanded location-based mobile services

Walmart began selling Apple's iPhone 3G at nearly 2,500 of its stores on Sunday. The news came just before AT&T announced Monday that it will sell refurbished iPhone 3Gs for just $99.

Walmart is offering the black 8GB iPhone 3G for $197 and the 16GB black or white model for $297. Those prices are contingent on a new two-year service agreement -- or a qualified upgrade -- from AT&T.

The hype that began with Apple's iPhone 3G launch Friday continued through the weekend and was almost as loud on Monday, with Apple adding to the fire. The company said it sold more than one million iPhone 3Gs and users downloaded more than 10 million applications from its App Store.

The Apple iPhone will account for 6.3 million of the 18.1 million touchscreen phones sold in the U.S. this year, for an impressive 35 percent market share, according to Strategy Analytics.

"We expect the release of the heavily subsidized 3G iPhone 2.0 on July 11th to catalyze a healthy spurt in touchscreen volumes during the second half of the year," said Strategy Analytics analyst Bonny Joy.

Apple is making headlines with the new iPhone 3G, and the academic world is seeing some opportunities for business case studies.

The iPhone 3G has built-in GPS for expanded location-based mobile services, and iPhone 2.0 software with support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync. It can run hundreds of third-party applications built with the recently released iPhone software developers kit.

Apple introduced the iPhone 3G on Monday. The new model has the original features that consumers raved about, but is twice as fast and half the price as the first-generation iPhone.

In the U.S. the new iPhone 3G is priced at $199 for the 8GB model and $299 for the 16GB model. The phone goes on sale in the U.S. on July 11.