Today marked the long-awaited unveiling of the new 2.0 version of the iPhone. The internet has been waiting breathlessly for the last 2 months for this day, and Steve Jobs delivered another of his seminal product unveilings (you want to learn how to present anything? Watch this guy work the crowd) and as usual, he’s out the change the world and this time I have the feeling he’s going to do even better than he did with the first iteration of the iPhone. Here’s why:

1) Mobile browsing is huge on the iPhone, 90% of all owners of the iPhone browse the web with it. Within 3 months of it’s introduction, it blew everything else out of the water in terms of market share. Now with the new version, it’s even faster with access to the 3G network. This is like surfing everywhere on WiFi which is going to make this an even more attractive platform for viewing content. Speed is king, and when you got that 1-2 minutes in the line in the grocery store waiting for the person with 60 items in the 10-item-or-less line, you want to have the speed to pull up something a) worth reading and b) quickly enough for it to be useful. Nothing sucks more than watching a progress bar crawl across a screen while web browsing. We all remember web surfing with a 28.8 Modem and nobody likes the equivalent of going back to it (Surfing over the slow, old cellular EDGE network)

2) Buying stuff through your phone. Steve has shoehorned another lovely way to separate you from your hard earned greenbacks, this time through the “App Store”. Now you’re able to buy games, applications, and more right from your phone. In that doctors waiting room for 30 minutes? Download a new game to keep yourself occupied, or download a new application to balance your checkbook while you wait. The developers who make these applications get 70% of the gross sale price, so it’s gonna be a cash cow for everyone, and a very easy way to empty your wallet. Why will it be so effective? Because every single iPhone user will have the ability to buy it, and it will be on standardized hardware so compatibility won’t be an issue, and payment is handled by Apple, they just drop the money into the developers bank account.

3) GPS in your phone. This is HUGE! Someone, somewhere, really really soon is going to build a great app that will allow you to see where you are down to 10 feet via GPS, and then display all the events that are happening around you, any merchants that have coupons/specials for what’s going on, and where your friends are. In terms of mobile advertising, this function alone is going to set off the equivalent of an atomic bomb in this fields revenue growth. The benefit for merchants and early adopters is that has very low barriers to entry for both price + ROI. The application that seems most promising right now is Loopt, a social-networking location-based system. Really cool, it will allow you to see and do pretty much everything you could ever want in terms of figuring out where your friends are. View the Keynote address and go in 27 Minutes and 30 seconds to see what it looks like and how it works. Welcome to the world of mobile advertising business owners, hop on board early and reap the benefits!

4) Its gotten cheaper. A LOT cheaper. As they say in the keynote, 56% of people wanted to buy the iPhone, but thought it was too expensive. Not anymore, the new price for the 3G iPhone is only $199. This will open up the phone to a huge number of people it wasn’t available to before, and even better, it’s now going to be available in 70 countries, so the global reach of this device is going to go up an order of magnitude, if not more. More people = more applications = more potential benefit for business owners looking to cater to that rapidly growing slice of the population.

5) Application development is easy. Companies that used to require employees to drag around enormous laptops for data entry, email, and CRM can now have a device that does all that and more in the palm of their hand. I know many hardened road warriors will be screaming at the top of their lungs to have these and drop those back breaking bricks called laptops. What’s really amazing is the trend in miniaturization recently. With a iPhone 3G and a Macbook Air, you can pretty much do anything you want to and still be carrying around less than 3.5 pounds (4.7 ounces for the iPhone, and 3.0 pounds for the Macbook Air)…viva la revolution!

All in all, an impressive day for Apple and the global community at large. Finally a device that will be equally empowering for phone owners as well as business owners, all in a hand held package that is so affordable that you can buy 3 of them with your snazzy $600 rebate. So get out there, help stimulate the economy, buy an iPhone 3G and help usher in the new era of mobile business and communications!