It’s not uncommon for a product to get to its 7th birthday, but it’s the fact that its Apple’s iPhone that is making us break out the celebratory pixels!
Steve Jobs at MacWorld 2007 debuting the iPhone
This day seven years ago, Steve Jobs stood on stage and announced the iPhone. “Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything,” and boy was he not wrong!
Apple did indeed “reinvent” the phone. Up to this point in time, the majority of smart phones were small screened, qwerty keyboarded and generally clunky and/or ugly. If you’ve watched the video posted above, you’ll already know all this, and fair play to Jobs and Apple they got it right. They did.
In the past seven years however, the iPhone has continued to dominate and sell. Argue all you want about the ascendancy of Android handsets and how Windows Phone is taking over the world with it’s glacial like pace; the iPhone is still a product all age groups want to buy into. Let’s crunch a few numbers:
- Over 420 million iPhones sold since June 29th 2007
- Over 1 million apps available
- More than $10 billion spent on those apps in 2013 alone
- The iPhone makes Apple more money (53% of its renevue) than Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck do for Disney
We can gush, we can criticise, hell we can just not care! But one thing is for certain, this is one of the most mature seven year olds you’ll ever meet, and if it weren’t for Steve Jobs and Apple, the phone (not just smart phone) market would probably be a very different landscape today.
Wonder does Leo actually own/use an iPhone?!
Many happy returns to you, iPhone!
Image courtesy of Warner Bros
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