When Steve Jobs unveiled his company’s eagerly-awaited Apple iPhone last January, search marketers everywhere contemplated the same question in their heads: will the iPhone be the key to finally unlock mobile search?

The phone has a sleek, impressive design and an innovative set of features, a combination that is often difficult to balance in most mobile devices. Part iPod, part phone, and part Internet access device, Apple’s new mobile baby runs on Mac OS X, is Wi-Fi and Bluetooth enabled, and has a 2-megapixel camera and an 8-gig hard drive.

Many features from OS X make a cameo, including Dashboard Widgets like Weather, Calculator, Calendar, and Stocks. It also runs a new touch screen technology which Apple is calling “multi-touch.” Also included is a major mobile search addition – Apple’s own Safari web browser.

The iPhone can access the internet through WiFi hot spots or through the Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE) system. It will also use this system to download and sync email from most IMAP and POP systems, including Microsoft Exchange servers, Google Mail and Yahoo! Mail.

But for search marketers, the most significant feature of the iPhone is its rich local search capabilities.

The iPhone, which is expected to ship as soon as next month, will come bundled with Google search and maps, and Yahoo! OneSearch, Go, and mail which will provide iPhone Safari users with convenient access to information.

The new mobile browsing experience may force the extinction of text-based pages, but all the existing guidelines for mobile search optimization will certainly apply.

If the phone will become as popular as the iPod, local search on mobile devices is bound to become a very big deal,  says Mike Boland in a report by the Kelsey Group.

In the past, the adoption of mobile local search has been hampered by the inferior user experiences of most mobile devices. Apple’s cache with consumers from the iPod and iTunes should ensure a healthy demand for this phone,  says Boland. Time will tell how well they embrace it, and if it does anything to push forward mobile local search in general.”

Like the iPod, a slew of third-party devices and applications will most likely emerge for the phone, and mobile local search could find its tipping point somewhere in the new Apple device.