Somewhere or other, I read about the iPhone acting as a classic low-end disruptor in the smartphone space, basically a more accessible mass-market option to a BlackBerry and the ilk.

But that’s just the phone part. A couple of news items point to Apple’s slim devices disrupting other media, effectively extending the definition of a “media player”. (That’s “devices” plural, because the iPod Touch runs on the same software platform and can do essentially the same non-telecom tasks as the iPhone).

- While the e-book publishing format is expanding, and most associated with dedicated hardware like Amazon’s Kindle and the Sony Reader, the iPhone/iTouch is actually having a more measurable impact on adoption:

Several e-book-reading programs have been created for the device, and at least two of them, Stanza from LexCycle and the eReader from Fictionwise, have been downloaded more than 600,000 times. Another company, Scroll Motion, announced this week that it would begin selling e-books for the iPhone from major publishers like Simon & Schuster, Random House and Penguin…

Publishers say these iPhone applications are already starting to generate nearly as many digital book sales as the Sony Reader, though they still trail sales of books in the Kindle format.

I don’t see how the e-book readers can compete, frankly. Why lug around an extra, oversized display screen when you can carry around your library in your pocket? Obviously screen-size is sacrificed, but most people are accustomed to reading off their phone screens by now. If anything, I see the Kindle, Reader, et al becoming niche products, for those who can’t do without large-print reading; everyone else will do their e-book reading via iPhone/iTouch. The disruption comes from including the e-book capabilities in the price of the device, versus shelling out a few hundred dollars for a separate reader.

- Videogames are the more obvious non-phone and non-music media applications that Apple is targeting (with the App Store providing a seamless pipeline for free/cheap games). In fact, it looks like the iPhone/iTouch platform is already helping to do in a previous leader in handheld gaming:

But then, set the [Sony PlayStation Portable] next to the iPhone or iPod Touch, the year’s other big winner in portable gaming, and the PSP’s hardware design suddenly looks old hat. Where’s the touchscreen? What are all these buttons for? What on earth is the point of this useless analog nub of a joystick? And why, in an age when flash memory is so cheap it practically comes in Cheerios boxes, are we still stuck with a huge, bulky, slow, and noisy optical drive? If you’re going to compete by offering a powerful hardware platform, you actually need to outperform the competition. As the iPhone steps into the portable gaming ring, it’s already got the PSP on the ropes.

Again, the disruption comes in baked-in cost savings: Why buy a separate, dedicated gaming machine if your existing phone/media player can already provide you with videogaming fun? Along with all the other media playback that the PSP does, mainly as a response to Apple’s player.

And this is on top of the music, Web access and other functions the iPhone/iTouch offers. Taken all together, it’s an impressive display of disruptive technology in digital media.