Much ado has been made lately in regards to the crop of new iPhone app services that are supposedly looming on the horizon.

Some have suggested that these stores could pose a financial threat to Apple, swooping in and collecting profits from products which can't be found in the App Store. That these stores will pose a new competitive threat to the company.

I have my doubts that these stores would pose any threat to Apple for a number of reasons.

First, this isn't anything new. Third-party applications were around long before the AppStore and they have been available for jailbroken iPhones for years. The people who wanted to run that software went through the steps of finding it, jailbreaking the phone, and installing the software.

While these stores may make it a bit easier to collect money from those apps, will they really do much else. Most people will still not want to jailbreak their phones, and of those that do, how many will want to shell out money for the software? Sure there is a small market there which could make a few bucks, but not enough to get Apple to notice.

And what if Apple does notice? What if one of these services lands an App that not only catches on, but spreads like wildfire and pulls users away from Apple's own software? The company simply drops that developer a line, brings the software into the App Store, and collects a nice share of the sales. They are still the supreme gatekeeper in all of this.

Even if that fails and this renegade App continues to elude its grasp and siphon profits from Cupertino, there's the Machiavellian genius of Steve Jobs at work. Apple does, after all, control the development and distribution of all patches for the iPhone and iPod touch. While they claim not to ever sabotage third-party software, firmware updates have an uncanny track record of causing "accidents" when installed on jailbroken phones.

With all this in mind, it's hard to imagine any of these services ever reaching a point where Apple has much to worry about.