MacRumors has a story up indicating that the iPhone might be opened up to third-party developers after all. At the moment it seems that Apple is considering it, although of course the official word hasn’t changed.

My money is on the API remaining officially closed for a while yet, although I think they are likely cleaning it up for outside consumption. Probably we’ll see some specific developers getting access to a set of tools under NDA, to get some feedback, with something going public later on. Possibly with Leopard, more likely later, unless they’ve had a great change of heart.