Interesting, given the recent flap over Google Voice for iPhone, which Apple (AAPL) hasn’t yet allowed into its iTunes App Store because it “appears to alter the iPhone’s distinctive user experience by replacing the iPhone’s core mobile telephone functionality and Apple user interface with its own user interface for telephone calls, text messaging and voice mail.”

How is Vonage’s (VG) app different? Its features and functionality are certainly very similar to those of Google Voice.

Apple won’t say, but the company did tell the Associated Press that Vonage’s app falls under the same category as other VoIP applications that have already been approved for the iPhone.

For free.

Which says quite a bit about the competitive pressures Microsoft (MSFT) is feeling right now, particularly from Google (GOOG), which first challenged Office two years ago and is now taking on Windows as well. “The fact that Microsoft is developing it at all is a response to Google,” said analyst Matt Rosoff of Directions On Microsoft. “This is a move that they probably wouldn’t have made if they didn’t have to, but there is enough competition bubbling up that they thought they needed a response.”

And a measured response that trumps Google’s offerings, which Office Web Apps will do on a few levels. First, it’s free of user-separation anxiety. Companies attached to Outlook, Word and whatnot will find in Office Web Apps the same familiar interfaces and functionality. No need to grudgingly replicate the Office experience as Google recently had to do with it Outlook synchronization tool for Apps, because Office Web Apps is Office.

Second, Microsoft’s approach offers enterprise an on-premises hosting option. Which means companies that aren’t comfortable running the suite on Microsoft’s remote data centers can run it on their own servers. And, as Gartner (IT) fellow Tom Austin notes, that could do much to distinguish it from Google Apps in the marketplace. “The hybrid hosting model removes a barrier to entry that Google cannot remove, so it is somewhat of a big thing,” Austin told Digital Daily.

“Interesting question is whether this hybrid hosting model is the Lockheed Prop-jet Electra of the era. Lockheed brought out a propjet at the same time Boeing and Douglas were coming out with turbojets (the 707 and DC-8 respectively). Boeing and Douglas won out, of course, but it didn’t help that the Electras had a problem with staying in the air….I am not saying that Microsoft Cloud-Office offering is a prop-jet Electra. I am saying firms will likely opt out of choosing the hybrid model because it’s less effective (like the electra).”

That breathless and swooning introduction aside, ngmoco co-founder Neil Young’s keynote address at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco today was noteworthy in that it really heralds the arrival of the iPhone as a gaming platform. The GDC is the largest annual gathering of professional videogame developers, so the fact that Young, an Electronic Arts (ERTS) alum turned iPhone developer, delivered his remarks from a stage that will soon host Nintendo president Satoru Iwata and Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima says a lot about the esteem in which game developers hold the device–dismissive comments from Sony (SNE) be damned.

Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone is still in its early stages as a gaming platform and make no mistake, it is a viable gaming platform, said Young. And he should know; ngmoco–the developer of popular iPhone game titles like Rolando, Dropship, and Topple–just closed a $10 million second-round of funding after only nine months in business.

“Don’t let the haters tell you it sucks compared to the [Nintendo] DS or the [Sony] PSP,” Young said of the iPhone. “It doesn’t. It’s good. It’s clear that the quality of iPhone games is eclipsing its console counterparts, and that’s even more acute when you compare it against the prior generation.” Why?

Unlike its console rivals, the iPhone is always connected, users always carry it, it offers unique features that can’t be found anywhere else–a touchscreen, an accelerometer, connectivity. In this way, said Young, the iPhone is similar to the Nintendo DS. When that device first launched, many thought it would be beaten into whimpering submission by the far more robust PSP. But that never happened. “Nintendo was able to win that battle by combining great software with hardware that it understood very well,” Young said. “If Nintendo made the iPhone, what would they focus on? I think they would build games that could only be on the iPhone. The designs would be progressive, discontinuous, and would have the user and the user’s context always in mind. They would have great underlying game design with native device functionality at the core.”

His point: Graphics and sound alone don’t necessarily make a great app. As Nintendo has shown us with the DS and the Wii, gaming is all about the platform. And Apple has clearly created one to be reckoned with.

A likely explanation. There’s little doubt the botched debut of the new Blackberry Storm undermined RIM’s performance this quarter. But perhaps there’s something more at work here as well–like the quality of RIM’s handsets themselves. “We think an additional factor is a poor reception to the much-anticipated Storm and Bold,” analysts at Deutsche Bank wrote in a client note. “We think the Storm has numerous flaws and the functionality of both devices is largely unchanged from previous devices.”