What Does Apple Have in Store for the 3G iPhone?

There's no bigger story on the Internet than the arrival of the 3G iPhone. Gizmodo reports that the launch date of June 9th has been confirmed by "very" reliable sources. The 3G iPhone will be introduced by Steve Jobs during his keynote at Apple's 2008 World Wide Developer's Conference (WWDC). Great! But most of us already knew that. Contrarians speculate that this date is bogus, because the phone hasn't been cleared by the FCC yet.

What about something we don't know like what features, other than AT&T's3G HSDPA networking, will come with the Jesus phone? Some of the things circulating the rumor mill include; Haptic interface, GPS with a kick-ass navigation application, monster battery, and a rainbow of color choices. Possibly the biggest draw, not necessarily a device feature, is a subsidized iPhone. The things we know will be include are the 2.0 version of the OS and a new SDK that 3rd party developers are using to create applications, that will be sold through the new App Store.

Well, all this hype might be setting us up for a real downer.Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster advised investors on Tuesday to keep their expectations for the 3G iPhone “in check.” Gene thinks the iPhone will be practically unchanged from the current iPhone, in both look and features.

Could this be the reason Apple took such a pounding in the market today? AAPL finished the session down 7.71 ( 4.15%) to 178.64. Doubtful, when you consider the Fed minutes reporting a weakening economy and with oil surging to another all-time high, up $3.80 a barrel. All in all Apple's losses were on par or fared better than other tech darlings such as GOOG 549.99 28.61 (4.94%), BIDU 354.99 17.14 (4.61%), and RIMM 132.89 5.71 (4.12%).