Apple Stock Soars Thanks To iPhone

The iPhone is sure to cause the latest case of gadget envy and already it's making waves in the stock market.

Thanks to Apple CEO Steve Job's iPhone announcement, his company's stock price soared Tuesday, reports CBS News science and technology correspondent Daniel Sieberg.

The iPhone will cut down on multitasking. It includes the music and video features from its iPod cousins but also global positioning, Google mapping software, Web surfing, e-mail and a phone.

More than 70 million iPods have been sold since they debuted in 2001 and during his keynote speech at MacWorld Conference & Expo on Tuesday in San Francisco, Jobs said his new "revolutionary product" will change everything.

The iPhone also has something called "visual voicemail" so you no longer have to check each message before skipping or deleting it. Jobs decided former Vice President Al Gore was worth listening to. He played Gore's voicemail for the audience.

"I wanted to say, congratulations on the iPhone. It is unbelievably cool," Gore said.

One of the iPhone's most significant innovations is that it has no buttons. Everything is controlled via touch screen.

"We're going to use a pointing device that we're all born with. It works like magic," Jobs said about the user's finger.

Some analysts are wary of Jobs' lofty claims. After all, Apple is not the first tech company to offer an all-in-one device. But you can't underestimate the power of that shiny logo.

"The iPhone's not the only thing that can do most of that stuff. But it's cool and well-designed — and it has the Apple chic about it," says Dave Hamilton, publisher of MacObserver.com.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where Apple doesn't have a presence, reaction was mixed.

"Sometimes it's overkill, just too much for me sometimes," a man at the show said.

"Everyone loves iPod and what would you want but a phone attached to it?" one woman said.

The device won't be available until June, and it won't be cheap. The price tag will start at about $500. But if it replaces a lot of the devices we use today — cameras, iPods, Blackberrys and cell phones — then who knows how many people may be willing to pay the price?