“An iPod. A Phone. And an Internet communicator.”
The exact words of former Apple CEO and tech innovator Steve Jobs took the world by storm when he stood on stage on January 9, 2007 to introduce the then much anticipated device. He described iPhone as something that was not like anything mankind knew.
The idea of combining a mobile phone and the company’s once popular iPod music player in a single gadget drew a mix of reactions from tech icons to consumers.
Then-Micorosoft CEO Steve Ballmer tried to downplay the rising interest on iPhone by saying, “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.” Of course, he was wrong. Numerous consumers from all over the world have always been excited every time a new iteration of the smartphone is unveiled. Since its debut, over a billion iPhone units have already been sold globally.
You would surely agree that since the first iPhone was launched, the device has changed the world in many ways. Here are some of those changes.
Smartphones got more popular
The revolutionary 3.5-inch touch screen that the first iPhone was most noted for brought the doom for the once-popular Internet-connected phone BlackBerry, then known as pocket-email device. The strong demand and clamor for iPhone paved the way for competitors to design and launch their own smartphones. Now, we can find too many options from different brands, all competing to be better than iPhone.
Personal computers took a downturn
About 219 million desktop and laptop computers were shipped worldwide in 2016, down from around 264 million in 2007, based on data released by research company Gartner Inc.
In comparison, 1.9 billion smartphones were shipped in 2016, higher than the 2007 figure of 1.15 billion. Gartner estimated that about 5 billion mobile phones are being used today globally, dwarfing the estimated 1.3 billion PCs in use currently.
Mobile apps amplify smartphones’ usefulness
iPhone introduced consumers to the world of apps. The first iPhone had built-in apps that were designed to check email and even get directions when traveling. Now, there are thousands of useful and entertaining apps that can be downloaded for free or for a fee from the App Store and even on competing Android phones’ Google Play Store.
September becomes an ‘Apple month’
In the past several years, all eyes and ears are set at Cupertino in California every time the month of September gets in. It has become a tradition that every first to second week of the month, Apple makes an announcement about a new iteration of the iPhone.
Weeks before this period, numerous tech journalists race to make a scoop about the latest new features of the new iPhone version. Information about the smartphone has become a constant ‘hot copy’ in its own traditional way.
With all these and more, can we still imagine a world without iPhone?