One Year Later. Light-Years Ahead (of RIM and Palm)

If you follow Apple (AAPL), you’ll never catch up. That seems to be the message of the banners being hung around San Francisco’s Moscone Center in advance of Apple’s World Wide Developers conference next week. “One year later. Light-years ahead” they proclaim in a shower of iPhone app icons — an obvious reference to the App Store’s success and the rivals who’ve yet to match it. Of course that’s no easy task when the market leader boasts 45,000+ apps and over 1 billion downloads.

Anyway, this is yet another clear indication that the iPhone and its upcoming 3.0 firmware update will be the focus of next week’s event.

[Image credit: Flickr, adamjackson1984]