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Steve Jobs iPhone 2007 Presentation (Full Transcript)

• July 4, 2014 3:22 pm November 20, 2023 8:08 am
• by Pangambam S

On January 9, 2007, then Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone for the first time and the world of mobile devices changed forever. Here is the full keynote presentation by Steve Jobs….

  TRANSCRIPT: 

Steve Jobs- Apple CEO

This is the day I’ve been looking forward to for two and a half years.

Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything and Apple has been – well, first of all, one’s very fortunate if you get to work on just one of these in your career. Apple has been very fortunate. It’s been able to introduce a few of these into the world.

1984 – we introduced the Macintosh. It didn’t just change Apple. It changed the whole computer industry.

In 2001, we introduced the first iPod. And it didn’t just change the way we all listen to music, it changed the entire music industry.

Well, today we’re introducing three revolutionary products of this class. The first one is a widescreen iPod with touch controls . The second is a revolutionary mobile phone . And the third is a breakthrough Internet communications device .

So, three things: a widescreen iPod with touch controls; a revolutionary mobile phone; and a breakthrough Internet communications device. An iPod, a phone, and an Internet communicator. An iPod, a phone… are you getting it? These are not three separate devices, this is one device, and we are calling it iPhone. Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone, and here it is.

No, actually here it is, but we’re going to leave it there for now.

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Troubleshooting, watch steve jobs introduce the original iphone in 2007.

Ten years ago today, on January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs introduced iPhone to the world.

In a highly anticipated keynote presentation, Jobs famously announced what seemed like three different products: a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a breakthrough internet communications device… of course this was soon to be revealed as all contained within the same device; the iPhone. The rest, as they say, is history.

As iPhone turns ten years old, it’s worth watching the full MacWorld 2007 presentation of Steve Jobs introducing the very first iPhone to the world. If you’re feeling nostalgic or just want to see one of Jobs most legendary presentations, it has been embedded below for easy viewing:

Whether you’ve had an iPhone since the very beginning, or are a newcomer to the platform, it’s fun to look back a decade and see how the genuinely revolutionary product was unveiled and demoed. It’s not hyperbole to say the iPhone changed consumer electronics, cell phones and smartphones forever, completely changing the expectations of what a phone can do and what a phone should be.

(Image of Steve Jobs holding original iPhone via @pschiller on Twitter)

A month after the device debuted on stage, the very first iPhone commercial was aired on TV, which is a classic worth watching as well.

It certainly makes you wonder, where will iPhone be in another 10 years?

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Just stop worrying about all the gizmos you think you need and enjoy the ones you have. Just leave my Mac, my IPad and my IPhone alone, when something new from apple comes out if there something I feel I want or need I will think about it then. I still wish they had left IPhoto alone, I still use it I do not like photo at all. If it isn’t broke do not fix

Man, I agree 1000%. I feel like the company has been infiltrated by average people with share prices than in the quality it takes to make it great. Even the OS on both iPhone and Mac are getting slower, buggier and bloated and with fragmented feature sets leaves you trying to figure out if development is under one roof in Cupertino or like their manufacturing process and made everywhere. I like their products still more than most but in the end ecosystems will be built and competition will come along and they will become the Dell of the computer industry–trying to cheap it out and milk pro features with cool videos selling the product as a must-have. 7 phones in 10 years. Geezu, think about it. Make the model I have now the best and I may upgrade the next time around instead of moving on to something else where you change the features so I forget how to login to my phone and how the heck to add a song to a playlist in the Music app. Uggh. Steve wouldn’t have stood for the bullsh*t.

It’s because of people like you that cause Apple to continually change the OS, because its just not technically possible to dramatically change the hardware year on year.

Wrong on the number of iPhones in 10 years btw. 1st gen: June 29, 2007 3G: July 11, 2008 3GS: June 19, 2009 4: June 24, 2010 4S: October 14, 2011 5: September 21, 2012 5C, 5S: September 20, 2013 6 / 6 Plus: September 19, 2014 6S / 6S Plus: September 25, 2015 SE: March 31, 2016 7 / 7 Plus: September 16, 2016

Everyone wants the next revolutionary device, but nobody says what that is or should be. There’s only so much you can do to a damn phone unless you want it to make you fly.

Apple have to keep changing and adding features to the OS because people keep bleating about how they want or expect more.

FYI, neither iOS or macOS are bloated or fragmented. In fact they have never been so integrated across all platforms as they are now. If you want fragmentation, look at android, its a dogs breakfast of garbage along with the garbage hardware that it comes in. Anyone for an exploding samsung? Now thats true fragmentation for you.

I don’t share your concern about Apple 10 years from now.

I think it’s very important to remember that Apple, at the time the first iPhone was released, was a much smaller operation.

They were certainly on a growing track before iPhone and it was to continue in a huge way after this launch. The broke record after record after record after record.

I’mm nobody, but I have managed small to medium companies with annual revenues up to 60 million. I cannot for the life of me, imagine how hard it has to be – after the crazy intense growth they had to sustain for years, and at the overall scale they are at now – to be as attuned and attentive as they were back then on each and every product release, firmware release, and OS release.

That doesn’t make it ok, but I am not unhappy at all with any of my current Apple products. In fact, on Friday I added to one of the many memorable Apple moments in my life with the arrival of my AirPods.

As expected, and as with every Apple product I have purchased since 2004, I was surprised and delighted with everything about them. That is how you want every customer experience to be, no matter what you do.

As with most companies, answering to the stock market on a quarterly basis is a big problem for most publicly traded companies. It make you potentially take your eye off the ball.

Anyway, I’m pretty hopeful at least that this company will continue to delight customers like me long into the future.

I have an original iPhone and iPhone 3G, they are quite literally more responsive to touch and “faster” in the interface than modern iPhones. Sure the internet was slower, but the device is much faster. Why is that?

Steve Jobs was a perfectionist and Apple developed for him, the entire company perfected products for him. Now they seem to design by committee for who knows who, they don’t seem to know who their customer is anymore, but the company is certainly no longer perfecting products and there are compromises all over the place.

Back then we celebrated revolutionary new products and technologies, with amazing intuitive interfaces and amazing performance. Today we celebrate losing features like headphone jacks, worse performance, a clunky “redesigned” lockscreen that still doesn’t feel right and should never have been changed from the iconic slide-to-unlock, and iMessage stickers? Oh and new Emoji!

At this rate I am very concerned about where Apple will be in 10 years, it’s not heading in the right direction right now.

Very well put, and I couldn’t agree more.

Apple have nothing to do with emoji’s. Unicode is the body that oversees their upgrade, Apple just implement them to keep up with the standard.

As for the original iPhone, it was a revolutionary device, but it certainly wasn’t faster than any iPhone I have had since.

Living in the past doesn’t bring the future any faster.

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• Smartphones

Watch Steve Jobs Unveil the First iPhone 10 Years Ago Today

T oday, our smartphones function like a high-tech Swiss army knife, serving as everything from a communications device to a digital camera to an alarm clock. That multiple-use functionality is exactly how late Apple CEO Steve Jobs teased the first iPhone when he introduced it on stage ten years ago today, on Jan. 9, 2007.

“An iPod, a phone, and an Internet communicator,” Jobs said on stage during the Macworld conference. “Are you getting it? These are not three separate devices. This is one device.”

The first-generation iPhone would be considered primitive by today’s technology standards, with its 2-megapixel camera, iPod Touch-inspired design, and 3.5-inch touchscreen. And it certainly wasn’t the first portable phone capable of connecting to the Internet. But the first iPhone is widely credited with heralding in the modern smartphone era, with nearly all of today’s devices taking design and functionality cues from Apple’s original handset.

Read more: The 50 Most Influential Gadgets of All Time

A decade after its original debut, the iPhone has become Apple’s most popular product, accounting for most of the company’s revenue . Later this year, Apple is expected to unveil a new iPhone with a dramatically different design, potentially adding new characteristics like a curved screen and ditching the home button.

Watch Jobs’ full 2007 keynote below:

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Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone 17 years ago today

Last updated 7 months ago

Steve Jobs with the original iPhone

Context is everything. On Sunday, January 7, 2007, Bill Gates gave the keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Hammering home Microsoft's then buzz phrase 'Digital Decade,' he talked about how great hardware wasn't enough, that we needed connected experiences. "Where people are being productive, doing new creative things, where they're mobile... that is the key element that is missing."

He said that, "Vista and the PC continue to have the central role," though he also claimed that Windows Vista was "the highest quality release that we've ever done."

Two days later and around 400 miles away, Steve Jobs introduced the very device, the very experience that Gates said was missing. He introduced the iPhone at Macworld San Francisco. While Jobs didn't use the term 'post-PC era' then, that's what the iPhone created. This was truly the device for productive, creative people on the move, and as an extra bonus, it ran OS X — now called macOS — rather than Windows Vista.

Many more things

That 2007 keynote is justifiably famous for how well it introduced the iPhone. Jobs opened it by saying that, "We're going to make some history together today" and it is the phone he meant.

His presentation is an example of a really finely produced keynote, and it takes you through the world of cell phones as they were before showing you exactly where they were all going wrong. And then how the iPhone would of course fix all that.

Today the segment showing what phones used to look like is a historical curiosity. But at the time, that wasn't the past, it was the present and these archaic-seeming phones were the best available.

If you dislike Apple, if your personal preference means you buy Androids instead of iPhones, you're still benefiting from that keynote today. During the many times Apple would later go to court over the similarities between iPhone and Android, it would present a graphic demonstrating its position. This is the one it showed when up against Samsung.

Yet the presentation did feature other things, some of which were roundly applauded at the time and one other that we've only truly learned to appreciate in the years since.

Jobs opened the presentation by referring back to what he'd announced the previous year. That 2006 keynote had been when Apple not only announced it was moving from PowerPC to Intel processors, it vowed to complete the transition for all Mac models within 12 months. In 2007, he referred to this as being a "huge heart transplant" and that, "we did it in seven months."

He said that Apple's previous year had been remarkably successful and he also specified that over half of all new Mac buyers were now switching from Windows. It had recently been half of all buyers in Apple Stores, but now it was 50 percent wherever you could buy a Mac.

Next, he showed a quote from a 2004 internal memo at Microsoft where Jim Allchin of the company's Senior Leadership team said, "I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft."

Jobs revealed that Allchin was shortly to retire, so he's "alerted our Seattle stores to keep an eye out for him and give him really good service."

The rest of that Allchin memo, incidentally, included the statement that "Longhorn [codename for Vista] is a pig and I don't see any solution to this problem." Jobs didn't quote that, but he did run a new ad from the Get a Mac campaign specifically aimed at Vista.

"So 2007 is going to be a great year for the Mac," said Steve Jobs, "but this is all we're going to talk about the Mac today. We're going to move on to some other things."

Remember that back in the mid-2000s, there were more rumors about Apple introducing a phone than there are today about it making a car. Vastly more. So with these words, he was surely going to make the big announcement next.

Except he didn't. Instead, Jobs seemed to tease us by talking about Apple's music business. What appeared to be a diversion was just the first part of setting the stage for the day's real purpose.

But for now, Jobs revealed that they had just passed 2 billion song sales and that the iPod had become the world's most popular video player "by a large margin." He revealed that in the then first four months that movies had been available on iTunes, people had bought 1.3 million of them.

At the time, there were only 100 films on the service, but Jobs announced this would increase to 250 because Paramount was coming to iTunes.

Jobs managed to make 250 movies sound good — but there was one figure he didn't even try to put a gloss on. And that was sales of the Zune, Microsoft's iPod killer which had been released the previous November. Only figures for that launch month were available, but they showed that after a big launch, the Zune had managed only 2 percent market share.

"No matter how you try to spin this, ah, what can you say?" said Jobs.

At last the iPhone

Finally, at 24 minutes into the presentation, Jobs paused. "This is a day I've been looking forward to for two-and-a-half years," he said. Later, at the end of the keynote and when it had gone so well, he also confessed on stage: "You know, I didn't sleep a wink last night, I was so excited about today."

It turned out that there were other reasons to not sleep a wink and Apple engineers knew them all. While it was only revealed very much later , Jobs's presentation was attended by iPhone engineers who knew how easily it could all have gone wrong. The software wasn't finished, the whole phone was still being worked on, and if Jobs deviated from the planned demo, it was likely that the phone would crash.

Instead, as you know, the whole presentation went flawlessly. Or rather, most of it did.

My clicker isn't working

Having successfully concluded the demo of the new iPhone, Jobs went on to talk about market share and clicked to move on to his next slide. And clicked. And clicked.

He explained that the clicker wasn't working and picked up a spare — which appeared to also not work. "They're scrambling backstage right now," he told the audience.

This segment is completely forgotten now, yet at a key moment on this most crucial presentation of his Apple career, it went wrong. You can only imagine how nervous it must've made Jobs.

But then you can also admire how he managed to fill for 55 seconds with a story about how Steve Wozniak had built a clicker-like device at college to mess with people's TV reception.

Aiming for 1 percent

Earlier, Jobs had made you think that the Zune's 2 percent market share was disastrous. When he got the slides working, he built up to saying that Apple was aiming for a 1 percent share of the cellphone market — and that this was great.

There was a bit of a difference though. Using the latest 2006 figures available, Jobs said that the cell market had been around one billion phones. Apple was aiming for 10 million iPhones in the first year.

The iPhone didn't actually launch until June, but it then took only 74 days for the company to sell its first million of them.

Different company

It's just that the company was no longer Apple Computer, Inc. The very last thing Steve Jobs announced at this presentation 15 years ago was that the company was changing its name.

Standing in front of a side that showed the Mac, iPod, Apple TV , and iPhone, he pointed out that only the first of those is truly what you'd call a computer. "We've thought about this," he said, talking about how Apple was doing more than just computers, "and we thought maybe our name should reflect this a little bit more than it does."

From this day on, the company would now be known as just Apple, Inc — and it would truly never be the same again.

The iPhone was the first iOS device, a category that now includes the iPod touch, plus all the variations of the iPad.

In September 2018, Tim Cook announced that Apple was close to shipping its 2 billionth iOS device .

At the time, AppleInsider worked the numbers and calculated that the 2 billionth iPhone — specifically iPhone — would be sold in the middle of 2021. No one knew then about the impact of the coronavirus on all phone sales — but it was already true that sales had been declining worldwide.

Apple now doesn't report iPhone sales, and it has not announced crossing the 2 billion figure. However, in January 2021, Apple announced that there were then over 1 billion iPhones in current, active use.

That's not sold, not pre-ordered, but over 1 billion iPhones being used every day. And at the same time, Cook said there were 1.65 billion Apple devices in use worldwide.

The iPhone was an enormous gamble, and it has surely paid off enormously.

Keep up with AppleInsider by downloading the AppleInsider app for iOS, and follow us on YouTube , Twitter @appleinsider and Facebook for live, late-breaking coverage. You can also check out our official Instagram account for exclusive photos.

74 Comments

and that the iPad was now the world's most popular video player "by a large margin". There was a bit of a difference though. Using the latest 2006 figures available, Jobs said that the cell market had been worth a billion dollars. Apple was aiming for 10 million dollars in the first year. Apple's aims for iPhone sales now seem modest I think you mean IPod not iPad in the first reference and clearly the graphic say 1% = 10M Units NOT 10M dollars. 

This day is depressing in retrospect as Steve was proud of his new invention. It was the new iPod and they believed it would be the only one of it's kind and rightfully so. The 62% iPod marketshare should have easily translated to %70 iPhone marketshare. The fact the U.S. and tech companies allowed android to create patent-infringing knockoffs just to make a quick buck for carriers who doubted iPhone is sad. Then came the commercials attacking Apple which created the rabid iKnockoff Knights who shit on everything Apple worked hard for THEM to enjoy!

I don’t think the iPad was the leading video player at the time...

rkla said: and that the iPad was now the world's most popular video player "by a large margin". There was a bit of a difference though. Using the latest 2006 figures available, Jobs said that the cell market had been worth a billion dollars. Apple was aiming for 10 million dollars in the first year. Apple's aims for iPhone sales now seem modest I think you mean IPod not iPad in the first reference and clearly the graphic say 1% = 10M Units NOT 10M dollars. 

I noticed that too. It's confusing but not wrong. 10 million dollars is %1 of a billion. Although I think Jobs was talking about 10M units not $ as that was very little money for such a massive project.

This is quite easily the greatest consumer product I've owned. By far. And, I still can't believe the value that it created for my stock portfolio in the past 12 years, which, in turn, enabled me to do a lot of things that I otherwise could not have.

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This Day In History : January 9

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Steve Jobs debuts the iPhone

On January 9, 2007, Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs unveils the iPhone —a touchscreen mobile phone with an iPod, camera and Web-browsing capabilities, among other features—at the Macworld convention in San Francisco . Jobs, dressed in his customary jeans and black mock turtleneck, called the iPhone a “revolutionary and magical product that is literally five years ahead of any other mobile phone.” When it went on sale in the United States six months later, on June 29, amidst huge hype, thousands of customers lined up at Apple stores across the country to be among the first to purchase an iPhone.

In November 2007—by which point more than 1.4 million iPhones had been sold—Time magazine named the sleek, 4.8-ounce device, originally available in a 4GB, $499 model and an 8GB, $599 model, its invention of the year. The iPhone went on sale in parts of Europe in late 2007, and in parts of Asia in 2008. In July 2008, Apple launched its online App Store, enabling people to download software applications that let them use their iPhones for games, social networking, travel planning and an every growing laundry list of other activities. Apple went on to over 10 updated models of the iPhone.

The iPhone helped turned Apple, which Jobs (1955-2011) co-founded with his friend Stephen Wozniak in California in 1976, into one of the planet’s most valuable corporations. In 2012, five years after the iPhone’s debut, more than 200 million had been sold. The iPhone joined a list of innovative Apple products, including the Macintosh (launched in 1984, it was one of the first personal computers to feature a graphical user interface, which allowed people to navigate by pointing and clicking a mouse rather than typing commands) and the iPod portable music player (launched in 2001), that became part of everyday modern life.

Steve Jobs Originally Envisioned the iPhone as Mostly a Phone

The origin story of the first iPhone reveals that Jobs was just trying to make a really cool phone.

They Can’t All Be iPhones: The Story of Apple’s Forgotten Flop

June of 2017 marked the 10‑year anniversary of the release of Apple’s iPhone, a device that not only revolutionized the way the world communicates, but also helped catapult Apple into a global economic and technological powerhouse. At a time when an estimated 700 million users around the world currently enjoy the fruits of Steve Jobs’ […]

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How It All Started: A Brief History of the First iPhone

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It’s been over a decade since the launch of the most iconic smartphone that changed the world and transformed all our lives. As the latest iPhone 12 series takes the world by storm, it’s interesting to go back in time and unpack the very first iPhone and its history. Let’s rediscover what it had to offer and how it kicked off a technology revolution.

Transforming the World with Touch

In 2003, Apple was working on new input methods for the Mac with the aim of getting rid of the mouse and keyboard. This led to experiments with multitouch, and one of the first prototypes of a finger-controlled tablet was the Model 035. It was a large tablet that looked like a chunky version of an iPad. However, at the same time, mobile phones were just beginning to gain popularity, and Apple made a move that would revolutionize the industry forever.

The iPhone was the debut of the touchscreen, which would soon become standard in the world of smartphones. Sure, there had been smartphones available from established manufacturers before, but they had physical keyboards and a much smaller screen. This was one of the main aspects in which the iPhone changed the game. It boasted capacitive touch technology that Apple acquired from a small company known as Fingerworks that had invented it.

The Masterminds

One of the people credited with innovating Apple’s greatest product is Jony Ive. Back then, his team was working on some tablet prototypes. At the same time, other people at the company were focused on the iPod. It was becoming clear that the iPod would soon merge into a cellphone so that people could carry one device that would fulfill both their communication and music needs.

That’s why, in 2005, Apple collaborated with Motorola to release the Rokr E1, which was an iTunes phone that could play music bought from the iTunes Music Store. However, it could store just one hundred songs, had a terrible interface, and took too long to transfer songs from a computer. Needless to say, Steve Jobs hated it.

This led to the idea to merge the phone and tablet projects. Steve Jobs, Tony Fadell, Jon Rubenstein, and Phil Schiller met with Jony Ive to see a demo of the 035 prototype. They were impressed but also doubtful that the technology would work for a cell phone.

A crucial development came in the form of a small test app that used only part of the 035 tablet’s screen. You could scroll on it using a finger.

This led to the decision to develop two phones in parallel. This secret phone project was given the code name “Purple,” or just “P.” Within this, the project based on the iPod nano was called the P1, and the other one based on the 035 tablet was codenamed P2. It was an all-new multitouch device that represented a considerable risk on the company’s part because Apple had no experience with smartphone development. They were a successful computer and music company then, and if Project Purple had gone wrong, it could have destroyed the company’s credibility and reputation.

The P1 project was led by Fadell, and his team focused on further developing the iPod into a phone. After six months, they produced a working prototype that could make and receive calls using a rotary dial pad on the screen. However, it was a pain to use and had too many limitations, such as it couldn’t surf the net or run apps.

After six months of work on the iPod-plus-phone P1, the project was shelved by Steve Jobs, who thought it was better to focus on P2. However, Fadell was skeptical of touch screens, particularly because devices like Palm Pilots were awkward to use.

From Prototype to Phone

After the decision to go ahead with the P2, Jony spearheaded the industrial design, Fadell led engineering, and Forstall, previously looking after Mac OS X, was put in charge of adapting the computer operating system into one for the phone.

Jony’s design team worked on the iPhone without even seeing the operating system. They first worked with a blank screen and later had just a picture of the interface with mock icons. Similarly, the software team never got to see the prototype hardware.

In fall 2004, Jony’s design team began work on two styles of what would become the iPhone. One prototype was called “Extrudo,” and was led by Chris Stringer. It resembled the iPod mini and was made from a flattened tube of extruded aluminum that could be anodized in different colors.

The other design was named “Sandwich,” and was led by Richard Howarth. It was primarily made of plastic and was rectangular with evenly rounded corners. It had a metal band around the midpoint of its body, a centered display on the front, a menu button below the screen, and a speaker slot above the screen.

Jony’s team preferred the Extrudo, but it ran into several problems and was eventually shelved. So Apple began moving forward with the Sandwich prototype.

However, by 2006, this too was discarded due to design issues, and the team then turned to an old model they’d made earlier but had discarded in favor of Sandwich and Extrudo. This discarded model looked very similar to the iPhone that the world would eventually see. It had an edge-to-edge screen and a single Home button. A gently curved back snapped seamlessly onto the screen. It looked minimalist and elegant while also being functional. Of course, several developments were made before it was ready to be unveiled to the world in June 2007.

Exploring the Specs

The original iPhone was based on the P2 device of the Project Experience Purple (PEP) team at Apple. It was-named M68 and had a 3.5-inch LCD screen at 320×480 with 163 pixels per inch. It also boasted 802.11b.g Wi-Fi, a quad-band 2G EDGE data radio, Bluetooth 2.0 EDR, and a paltry 2-megapixel camera.

These specs might fade in comparison to today’s context, but back then, in 2007, it was still revolutionary and kicked off Apple’s trend of giving the world incredible new phones.

Under the hood, it was powered by an ARM-based 1176JZ(F)-S processor and PowerVR MBX Lite 3D graphics chip, manufactured by Samsung.

The onboard RAM was just 128MB, and the battery was 1400 mAh battery. At launch, it offered two NAND Flash-based storage tiers – 4GB or 8GB.

It also included sensors like an accelerometer that could automatically rotate the screen to match device orientation, a proximity sensor that would automatically turn off the display when close to the face, such as when taking a call, and an ambient light sensor to adjust screen brightness for optimal viewing experience automatically.

Lastly, it could be charged and synced to iTunes using the 30-pin connector.

Before the official release, Steve Jobs accidentally scratched the iPhone screen with the keys in his pocket. This led to Apple teaming up with Corning, who had invented a new, chemically hardened material. This was turned into the Gorilla Glass on the first iPhone.

What about Software?

As for the software side of things, many tweaks happened pre-release. For instance, the split-screen mode for email got canceled after Steve Jobs thought it looked too crowded on the small screen.

Since the ‘i’ in iPhone alludes to the internet, the first model of this iconic device came with a relatively full version of Safari, Apple’s renowned browsing experience from Mac. The team also used Google’s location data to create a superb Maps implementation for the mobile device.

However, the first iPhone did not have any third-party apps and maxed out at just 16GB of flash memory. It was also exclusive to the AT&T carrier, which had a notoriously slow and unreliable EDGE GSM network.

The original iPhone was first shipped on June 28, 2007, and even then, spiraling queues formed outside Apple Stores, particularly the flagship ones such as the glass cube in New York City.

Despite the buzz and anticipation, Apple’s competitors were dismissing the hype as temporary. The media dubbed the device as the Jesus Phone!

The Phone that Defined and Defied History

Even though it was just a little over a decade ago, the world was still very different back in 2007. Bandwidth was quite limited and expensive. Moreover, smartphones only appealed to niche user groups and not the masses.

The original iPhone sold over 6 million units in its first year on four carriers in four countries. Today, hundreds of millions of iPhones are sold on almost every carrier in almost every country. Apple has diversified into a range of smart tech products and services such as the Apple Watch, Apple TV, CarPlay and AirPlay, AirPods, HomePod, etc.

The first iPhone’s successor was the iPhone 3G that boasted 3G functionality, apps, and more. It arrived a year after the first device, which was discontinued the same week. The first generation iPhone was eventually declared obsolete in June 2013, before the launch of the iPhone 5 and 5S.

In 2013, a prototype of the first-generation iPhone sold for $1500 on eBay! After all, it’s now a relic of what technology is capable of achieving. Perhaps nobody could have predicted how the iPhone has evolved over the past thirteen years, but Apple and Steve Jobs made a bold move with that first device. The rest, of course, is history.

You may like to read:

• Apple’s First-Ever Laptop: An Origin Story
• iPhone History: 10 Most Interesting Facts You Need to Know
• The history of the Apple Watch: 6 years and counting…

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