Firewire cable won't charge iPhone 3GS.......Why

Can someone explain to me why my firewire cable won't charge my iPhone yet it will charge my ipod 3rd gen, 5th gen and touch 1st gen without any problem!
I have the firewire/usb double connector cable which goes into a dock station. The firewire goes to the mains plug and the usb lead is free to connect to my laptop for syncing etc. When I connect the iPhone i get the message about not compatible etc etc. Is this just a money making scam to make you buy a new usb lead?
The beauty of this lead was to allow me to dock the ipod/iphone to charge and sync separately if needed.
Anyone......

"On to the power adapters. Here’s the story: We learned a while back that iPhone 3G doesn’t support charging “via FireWire.” The thing is, there are lots of devices out there that don’t actually have a FireWire port, but are technically FireWire chargers because they’re sending power on the dock-connector pins that were used for power by the FireWire interface. There are a lot of reasons for this, chief among them the fact that the FireWire spec allows as much a 18 volts, while USB is a 5-volt connection. Since cars provide 12 volts of power, many if not most car-chargers used the FireWire method to send power.
However, in the interests of space and simplicity (i.e., not having to engineer for two separate power paths), Apple has dropped support for FireWire charging with the iPhone 3G. This means that many accessories won’t charge an iPhone 3G. Borchers said that Apple gave accessory developers a strong hint that this was going to happen a while ago, but he said that some companies have continued to implement FireWire-based chargers despite the warning.
But there’s some hope in sight: Borchers told me that at least a couple of third parties will be releasing converters that will pass through the dock connection, but convert the power to a USB standard. That adapter may make many of those charging devices come back to life."
That is from the link he provided.

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