Here’s a seemingly simple question: what is Apple’s iPhone? Well, that’s obvious. It’s a phone. It’s a cellphone. It’s a music/media player. It’s a handheld communications device. It’s a cool gadget. It’s a smartphone.

Hmm… maybe that’s not such an easy question to answer after all. iPhone is many things to many people, even though it won’t actually be available in stores until June.

In a report out today, industry research firm ABI challenges one of the possible labels for Apple’s iPhone. Namely, that it is a “smartphone.” The device may be many things, ABI says, but a smartphone it ain’t.

How do you figure that? Well, the research firm defines a ‘smartphone’ as “a cellular handset using an open, commercial operating system that supports third party applications.”

Because iPhone runs Apple’s proprietary OS X operating system, ABI analysts Stuart Carlaw and Philip Solis say, that means it cannot be rightfully labeled a ‘smartphone.’

“It turns out that this device will be closed to third party applications,” Solis said in a statement. “Therefore we must conclude at this point that, based on our current definition, the iPhone is not a smartphone: it is a very high-end feature phone.”

Solis and Carlaw stress the lack of openness to third-party applications, saying that feature phones, unlike smartphones, are closed and controlled by the operator and/or manufacturer. iPhone therefore falls into the ‘feature phone’ category.

Hmm…. I’m not sure I entirely agree. Perhaps its true that, for now, iPhone is closed to third-party apps. But I don’t believe for a moment that such will remain true forever. Apple is a clever company, too clever to lock consumers in by refusing to open the phone up to the third-party ecosystem Solis and Carlaw describe in the ABI report.

After all, as these analysts point out, “Applications designed for smartphones can be written to access core functionality from the OS itself, and are therefore usually more powerful and efficient.”

I will admit, though, that Apple probably will maintain stronger control over third-party apps than some other cellphone manufacturers do. Apple tends to insist that you do things their way—because it is the ‘right’ way.

I learned this recently when I got an iPod for the first time, and attempted to use my formerly convoluted system for importing books on CD into MP3 format—with iTunes. When I got frustrated because my old system didn’t work in iTunes, my husband (who works almost exclusively on Macs) said, “No, just do it the iTunes way and it will work.” Sure enough, he was right.

So, perhaps Apple won’t let third-party developers create just any applications—they may be strong-armed into creating apps that work the Apple way. But is that such a bad thing? From what I can tell, the Apple way is typically very intuitive and simple. 

So what's in a name? Only time will tell whether Apple's phone is a 'smartphone'--or even it if will be called iPhone.