Yes, the real reason the world wants to buy a 3G iPhone is to run all those ancient Palm apps, right? Well, no. Not really. But... hey, the iPhone is already an emulation maniac, Palm is cool to add to the list. But we can skip Windows Mobile emulation on the iPhone, right?

Thousands of old Palm mobile applications could soon be yours to run on your 2G or shiny new 3G iPhone, if Palm emulation experts StyleTap get their way and are allowed to officially release a Palm emulator for the iPhone through the upcoming iPhone App Store.

Called StyleTap CrossPlatform for the iPhone - and the iPod Touch, over 20,000 Palm apps could soon be usable on Apple's handheld devices, but we'll all need to wait until early July to find out if StyleTap will get Apple's a-ok to release the software.

StyleTap say they will be at Apple's WWDC on June 9 to 13, and offer themselves to Apple developers to talk to.

StyleTap do have a video of the software in action, which they posted at YouTube, although to do that they must have jailbroken the iPhone, which may or may not make Apple very happy.

It was an "experimental prototype", and StyleTap said "the response was instant and overwhelming - the videos have been viewed more than 800,000 times and the company received many emails from both end-users and application developers expressing great interest in having such a product available."

Gregory Sokoloff, CEO of StyleTap Inc. "The iPhone is one of the hottest new mobile devices out there. And the response to our video has convinced us that many, many consumers, and companies, will eagerly jump at the change to buy iPhone devices if they can continue to run their must-have applications."

StyleTap reckon that, technically speaking, the "StyleTap CrossPlatform is an excellent fit with the iPhone, as the powerful processor and large screen allows applications written for Palm OS devices to run at full speed and at full screen resolution. The iPhone touch screen technology works in a very natural way with mobile applications originally designed for touch screen devices."

And they say that if you can run an older app, why not? StyleTap solves this problem... well, if the app you want is on the Palm platform, in any case, and they say they are "the best of both worlds" - no changes and no work, just use the old app and off you go.

As you'd expect, StyleTap spruik the fact they already let Windows Mobile users run old Palm apps if they want to, and will soon make the system available for Symbian OS devices too, which is currently in beta testing.

About the only people that are probably really unhappy about this are Palm themselves. Who needs to buy a Palm if you can run that software on a completely different system?

And one final thing: no fake/real 3G iPhone pics today. Maybe later today or tomorrow...