When Apple announced the iPhone in 2007, Steve Jobs called it a “revolutionary product” in a mobile phone category that he said needed to be reinvented.
Today, nearly two decades and 42 models later, the iPhone is one of the most popular phones in the world. According to a study by Demand Sage, Apple has sold over 2.3 billion iPhone devices and has over 1.5 billion active users.
The original iPhone was released in June 2007 and sold exclusively on AT&T for $499.
The late Apple boss Steve Jobs introduced the first iPhone in 2007.
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“Investors have been optimistic about the impact this could have on Apple,” said Gene Munster of Deepwater Asset. “The initial data released by AT&T was a disappointment over the first few days of sales. I remember talking to investors after that first weekend, and the general impression was that this product was, in the words of one investor, dead on arrival.”
Apple sold 1.4 million iPhones in 2007, with 80% of sales occurring in the fourth quarter. That same year, Nokia, the maker of the legendary Nokia 3310, sold 7.4 million mobile phones in the fourth quarter alone.
“Nokia was considered unstoppable and unbeatable,” said CNBC technology reporter Kif Leswing.
JAPAN – FEBRUARY 15: The Nokia 3310 was launched on September 1, 2000
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“The investment community largely assumed that it would be a much more difficult market for Apple to really crack,” Munster said.
Things started to change for Apple with the launch of the App Store in 2008. This helped usher in a new wave of modern technology companies like Uber and set Apple apart from its competitors.
“The App Store has enabled your phone to become much more,” Munster said. “That was the point, this insight that other phone manufacturers didn’t expect.”
Apple saw increasing iPhone sales in the years following the App Store. With the iPhone 4s, the company reached an important milestone in 2011 – more than 50 million units sold. The company sold 72 million units this year. By 2015, Apple was selling over 200 million iPhone devices annually.
“I don't think the iPhone set the standard that almost all phones have followed since,” said Marc Weber of the Computer History Museum. “The App Store was a huge thing and Android basically followed that model with the Play Store.”
A decade after the release of the iPhone, Apple became the first publicly traded U.S. company to reach a market capitalization of $1 trillion and is now one of the most profitable companies in the world.
Apple recently overtook Samsung, one of its biggest competitors, as the global smartphone market leader for the first time. According to International Data Corp. Apple holds just over 20% of the global market share, a spot that Samsung has held since 2010.
“There was a period from 2008 to 2015 where Apple had to think about what Samsung was going to do with Android. Their market share actually went down globally,” Munster said. “But Apple is the master of building the ecosystem. I cannot imagine a scenario in which Samsung can develop a series of products that disrupt the Apple ecosystem.”
Lately, Apple has been dabbling in machine learning and AI for the iPhone, but companies like Microsoft, Google and Open AI have embraced the technology more openly.
“AI will be critical to humanity and will be a critical feature in iPhones,” Munster said. “Apple is using AI to make its products work better at organizing photos, organizing emails, and potentially organizing text. However, the biggest part is that the iPhone doesn't capture all the possibilities and doesn't really use them. Far from it when it comes to AI.
Watch the video to learn more about how the iPhone shaped Apple.