For this article, you're going to need large black plastic bags, a shovel, and something to cover the stench.

Why?

Because Steve Jobs just uncovered the dead. I'm talking about the elusive iPod phone. It's been talked about for so long. But now, Steve Jobs himself is supposedly so excited about it that he keeps talking about it. Imagine. Steve "Everything-Is-Top-Secret" Jobs, blabbing to people about an iPod phone? It sounds so unbelievable I almost spat out my coffee when I first found out about it.

Steve blabbing secrets! That right there makes me think this is either a rumor or a ruse, and my bet is it's a ruse. Apple's up to something, and this is all a smokescreen (like when Apple announced they'd never enter the sub-PC market and then went ahead and released the Mac mini only a few months later). Steve Jobs is an evil genius.

Still, Wall Street analysts (PiperJaffray, Bear Stearns, etc.) are saying an iPod phone is likely to happen. They cite their own reasons and proofs that Apple has, indeed, been hard at work on mobile phone technology. Unfortunately, chances are this news is going to turn stale and start to smell funny before any of us will get to see an iPod cell phone: analysts expect the phone to come out in the middle of next year, if not later.

What's holding up the process? According to some market analysts and Wall Street watchers, it's probably economics. Apple has to be careful because an iPod mobile phone might ruin sales of low-end iPods. This is because when technologies are merged, demand for low-end products tends to go down. For example, now that most mobile phones have cameras, nobody buys the cheap digital cameras, but people still buy the high-end ones. The same thing might happen to Apple's brand-new lower-end iPods and refurbished units.

Gene Munster, an analyst at PiperJaffray, said that Apple is probably better off concentrating on devices with one main feature instead of making devices (like an iPod phone) that have multiple functions. I'm not sure how serious a man named "Munster" can be, but we do know from past experience that Steve Jobs has a habit of pulling the plugs on a project even after it's far into its development. So even if Apple really is developing an iPod phone, it might never finish development.