Launch of the iPhone (2007): The Smartphone That Changed It All

The launch of the iPhone began on 9 January 2007, when Apple chief executive Steve Jobs unveiled the device at the Macworld conference in San Francisco. Released in the United States on 29 June 2007, the iPhone combined a phone, a music player and a web browser behind a large touchscreen operated with the fingers. It set the template for the modern smartphone and changed how billions of people use the internet.

Background: phones before the iPhone

Mobile phones had spread rapidly since the first handheld mobile call in 1973. By the mid-2000s, Nokia dominated global sales, while BlackBerry devices with physical keyboards were popular with business users, and phones running Windows Mobile and Symbian offered email and basic web access.

Most of these “smartphones” were awkward for browsing the World Wide Web, relying on small screens, styluses or keypads. Mobile networks were also controlled tightly by carriers, which decided what software customers could use.

Apple had transformed music with the iPod from 2001, but its executives worried that phones with music players would make the iPod obsolete. An earlier collaboration with Motorola, the ROKR phone of 2005, which ran Apple’s iTunes, was widely seen as a disappointment.

Developing a secret device

Apple’s phone effort grew out of work on a multi-touch tablet screen. Around 2004-2005 the company began a secret programme, code-named Project Purple, to build its own phone. Engineers worked in locked areas and under strict secrecy.

Two approaches were tried: one based on the iPod’s click wheel, and one using a touchscreen running a version of Apple’s Mac OS X operating system. The touchscreen version won. Scott Forstall led the software work, Tony Fadell’s iPod division led the hardware, and Jony Ive’s design team shaped the look of the device.

Apple signed an exclusive deal with Cingular Wireless, soon renamed AT&T, which gave Apple unusual control over the phone’s software and design.

The technology inside

The iPhone’s screen used capacitive multi-touch, which detected the electrical properties of a finger rather than pressure from a stylus, and could follow two fingers at once. Apple had strengthened its expertise in this area by acquiring FingerWorks, a small American maker of multi-touch keyboards, in 2005.

Sensors made the interface feel responsive. An accelerometer turned the picture when the phone was rotated, a proximity sensor switched off the screen when it was held to the ear, and an ambient light sensor adjusted the brightness. Shortly before launch, Jobs insisted on replacing the planned plastic screen with scratch-resistant glass, and the American company Corning supplied a toughened glass later marketed as Gorilla Glass.

The unveiling

On 9 January 2007 Jobs told the Macworld audience that Apple was introducing three products: a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a mobile phone and an internet communicator. He then revealed that they were a single device, the iPhone.

The demonstration showed features that seemed novel at the time: scrolling by flicking a finger, pinching to zoom photos and web pages, a full web browser (Safari) showing ordinary websites, visual voicemail, and a screen that rotated automatically. The phone had a 3.5-inch screen, a 2-megapixel camera and no physical keyboard.

Some features were missing. The phone lacked 3G mobile data, could not record video, had no copy-and-paste and did not allow third-party applications. Some industry figures were sceptical, doubting that business users would accept a touchscreen keyboard. Jobs famously said that Apple was going to “reinvent the phone”. The name also caused a dispute with Cisco, which owned the “iPhone” trademark; the two companies reached an agreement in February 2007.

On sale

The iPhone went on sale in the United States at 6 p.m. local time on 29 June 2007, with long queues outside Apple and AT&T stores. Apple sold its millionth iPhone 74 days later, in September 2007. It launched in the UK and Germany on 9 November and in France later that month.

In July 2008 the iPhone 3G added faster data and GPS. More important was the App Store, which opened on 10 July 2008 and allowed outside developers to sell applications. It started with about 500 apps and grew to hundreds of thousands within a few years.

Apple had initially told developers in June 2007 to build web applications that ran in the phone’s browser. Hackers quickly found ways to “jailbreak” the iPhone and install their own programs, and in March 2008 Apple announced a software development kit that opened the platform to outside developers under its own control. The app model, with Apple taking a 30 per cent share of sales, became a template for the industry. Time magazine named the iPhone its invention of the year for 2007.

By the numbers

Consequences

The iPhone changed the balance of the mobile industry. Google, which had been developing Android, shifted its design towards touchscreens, and the first Android phone, the HTC Dream, went on sale in 2008. Within a few years touchscreen phones running iOS or Android dominated the market, while BlackBerry and Nokia lost most of their share.

The smartphone also reshaped the wider economy and daily life. App-based businesses in ride-hailing, messaging, mapping, photography and social media grew on top of it, and in many countries mobile devices became the main way people go online. Critics have pointed to concerns about screen time, privacy and the environmental and labour costs of manufacturing.

Myths and facts

The iPhone is often described as the first smartphone or the first touchscreen phone. Neither is true: the IBM Simon of 1994 combined a phone with a touchscreen and simple applications, and the LG Prada, announced shortly before the iPhone, also used a capacitive touchscreen. What was new was the combination of a large multi-touch display, a desktop-class web browser and an interface designed entirely around the finger.

Nor did the iPhone dominate immediately. In its first years it held only a small share of global phone sales, and Nokia remained the world’s largest phone maker until it was overtaken by Samsung in 2012. The iPhone’s influence came less from its early sales than from the way it changed what customers, carriers and rival manufacturers expected from a phone.

Timeline

• 2005, September: Apple and Motorola release the ROKR, a phone with iTunes.
• 2007, 9 January: Steve Jobs unveils the iPhone at Macworld in San Francisco.
• 2007, 29 June: The iPhone goes on sale in the United States.
• 2007, 5 September: Apple cuts the price and discontinues the 4 GB model.
• 2007, 9 November: The iPhone launches in the UK and Germany.
• 2008, 10 July: The App Store opens.
• 2008, 11 July: The iPhone 3G is released.
• 2016, July: Apple announces it has sold its billionth iPhone.

Why it matters

Much as the IBM Personal Computer set a standard for desktop computing, the iPhone defined the form of the modern smartphone: a slab of glass controlled by touch, with software from independent developers. It turned the mobile phone into a pocket computer and helped move much of daily life online.