Here at the MobileBeat 2008 conference in Sunnyvale, Calif., Matt Marshall, editor-in-chief of VentureBeat, dove right into the first panel of the day and fired off a series of questions on the iPhone and Apple’s new App Store.

Has hype gotten ahead of the iPhone? Shawn Carolan, managing director at Menlo Ventures: “The hype around the iPhone is warranted in some ways and not in other ways … People know that it’s pretty hard to grow a big business … around just advertising.” Let’s say there are 10 million iPhones in use next year and you get 10 percent penetration at 100 page views a month at a reasonable $1 CPM; that only translates to $100,000 a month. “That’s not that interesting a number.” However he still thinks hybrid business models are in the pipeline. “The iPhone developers haven’t had the time to do all the things they want to do.”

What does AT&T (NYSE: T) think of early results from the App Store? Rupert Young, business development at AT&T: “In terms of the store, the number of downloads is quite impressive.” That said, penetration for applications that sit further down in the catalog, on say page five or more, aren’t seeing as much success as the top-selling applications. “There aren’t necessarily that many more apps that are going to get more distribution than the traditional model,” he said, comparing the App Store to AT&T’s media deck. Ratio of successful applications should be in line with what’s worked on AT&T’s deck.

Is the Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) or BlackBerry platform more attractive? “I’m a VC and it’s about the money,” said Rick Segal from the BlackBerry Partners Fund. “We’re looking at things that that mass of people is going to be looking for.” Simple business 101 tells him to go after the largest market potential and not just one platform that works with one device.

Doesn’t Apple’s App Store just become another version of the carrier deck? “Apple is a walled garden, it’s just another form of a walled garden,” said Richard Wong, partner at Accel Partners. “Hopefully it’s a more benevolent walled garden.” He too thinks it’s better to go after the broadest range of devices possible, rather than just one platform for one device. “We hope to find companies that are multi-threaded.”

What is AT&T’s current strategy? Is it focused on billing, location, what are you investing in? Young said AT&T is investing in devices and network capabilities, and for good reason, he argued. If 25 percent of AT&T’s subscriber base signed up for mobile data, that would translate to $10 billion a year. AT&T cares more about strategic technologies that do more for its platform and customers and because of that it doesn’t focus as much on the potential immediate return on investments. “We’re conservative investors” and so we like to see predictable returns.

What’s a good and bad investment in mobile now? Carolan said it’s pointless for new companies to try to be the Facebook of mobile. “What you should do is find a latent need that is unlocked in the mobile environment because it wasn’t very useful in the PC environment.” It’s also not practical to build an e-mail client for mobile, Segal said. Now that you have capable devices in people’s hands, companies should think about what services they can offer that weren’t possible on lower-speed networks.