I vividly remember Steve Jobs introducing the iPhone on January 9, 2007, a device he called the touchscreen iPod, mobile phone, and “Internet communicator,” all in one product. I immediately looked at my Motorola Razr with a burning feeling of hatred. Now, in retrospect, it's pretty easy to say that the launch of the iPhone was the most transformative event in the last 20 years of consumer technology. Although the original model lacked many important aspects, its impact was so immediate and monumental that the history of consumer technology was instantly divided into two eras: Pre-iPhone and Post-iPhone.
Take the personal computer revolution for example. Moving room-sized computers from research institutes to something the average person could buy and use in their home was certainly a breakthrough, but there were multiple turning points in the '70s, '80s, and '90s that helped mark the beginning of modern computing. The trinity of the Apple II, the Tandy TRS-80 and the Commodore PET 2001 in the '70s represented the first wave, followed by the rise of the IBM PC and Macintosh in the '80s. Things really took hold in the '90s with the Microsoft Windows domain; The arrival of Windows 95 was a particularly transformative moment. In more recent history, the laptop became viable and then dominant in the late 90s and 2000s, changing the way most people think about computing. These were all events that advanced the personal computing market, but it's hard to say that one was more important than the others. It was rather a gradual rise and fall of various technologies that brought us to the modern era.
But the mobile phone market was completely reshaped by the iPhone, although it took a few years for the effects to manifest. Companies like BlackBerry, Palm and Nokia clung to the pre-iPhone smartphone conception for too long, focusing on business users and physical keyboards and failing to materially improve the software experience. Those companies have disappeared or are now irrelevant to mainstream consumers. Palm's introduction of its own webOS and Microsoft's purchase of Nokia to boost Windows Phone were reasonable efforts to challenge the iPhone, but they were too little, too late. The quality of the hardware and software was hit and miss in both cases, but the main problem was that developers never adopted either platform, largely because consumers adopted the iPhone and Android so quickly. The best iPhone apps usually never make it to those devices, leading to inevitable doom.
On the other hand, Google and Samsung bet on Android almost immediately and quickly reaped the rewards of having an alternative to the iPhone. Android had enough similarities to iOS while also offering enough differentiation to capture a new share of the market. This is particularly true internationally, where the huge variety of prices and devices was a big advantage in markets where most people couldn't afford Apple products. And since Android arrived just a few months after Apple launched the iPhone App Store, developers quickly began writing apps for both platforms, giving Android the support it needed. Basically, everyone followed in Apple's footsteps or quickly went extinct.
Needless to say, the iPhone transformed other businesses as well. The past few years have been inundated with single-function devices, from obvious things like digital cameras, portable gaming devices, and the iPod. (Consider also what phones have done to clocks, paper calendars, lists, and address books.) In the post-iPhone era, consumer digital cameras and portable music players are extremely niche: the iPhone's camera is more than enough for most people. and the iPhone itself quickly cannibalized the iPod.
Handheld gaming systems are experiencing a resurgence, but the popularity of gaming on a phone that anyone can pick up and play is unmatched. If Nintendo's Wii made its mark by offering casual gaming, the iPhone and the App Store quickly adopted that concept. Both Mobile Call of Duty and candy Crush Saga have peaked at around 500 million players, while Minecraft It is the best-selling game of all time, with 300 million copies sold. Most AAA blockbuster titles do not exceed 50 million copies sold.
Going from that Razr to an iPhone was a breath of fresh air. Watching YouTube and movies I had purchased through iTunes transformed my air travel or commuting. Being able to browse real web pages and use a sufficiently robust email client while traveling made me more productive (and began my crippling information addiction). The “Touchscreen iPod” seemed like a futuristic and intuitive way to navigate my music library. It took until the iPhone 4 in 2010 for Apple to really focus on the camera and image quality, but that didn't stop people from taking tons of photos and uploading them to Facebook. Even the 2009 iPhone 3GS took such respectable stills and videos that my photo library began to grow exponentially, and I'm glad I have plenty of those old, grainy shots from my 20s.
And about a year after the first iPhone, the App Store opened the doors to what was possible. Games, productivity tools, better messaging apps, social media, music streaming, and everything we associate with a modern smartphone quickly emerged. Some people didn't really consider the first iPhone a “smartphone” since you couldn't install third-party apps, and Apple wisely saw the writing on the wall and corrected that glaring omission.
If all the changes that followed the rise of the iPhone are a good The thing is debatable. Having almost unlimited access to the Internet at all times often seems like more than we can handle, and smartphones have enabled all kinds of digital abuse. Our privacy has gone out the window as these devices record vast amounts of data about our movements, desires, spending habits and search histories on behalf of the world's largest companies, which monetize it and try to keep us addicted. Steve Jobs almost certainly didn't have all this in mind when he pulled the iPhone out of his pocket in 2007, and technology advanced so quickly that we didn't know what we were getting into.
The ramifications of all this will take decades to fully manifest, and to some extent, many of us are already moving away from the “always connected, sharing everything” mentality that the iPhone enabled. It's impossible to ignore the specter of government regulation, at least from the EU, for companies like Apple and Google, although it's hard to imagine anything happening that could loosen their grip any time soon. Regardless of the changes, there is no doubt that we live in a world where, thanks to the iPhone, the most important computer in people's lives is the one they carry in their pocket.
Celebrate Engadget 20th anniversaryWe take a look at the products and services that have changed the industry since March 2, 2004.
