Camping to buy a cellphone? How crazy is that? If the BlackBerry taught us anything, it was that cell phones could become truly addictive. But no one had ever seen anything like the iPhone before. BlackBerry Co-CEO Jim Balsillie reportedly uttered these famous last words the very next day, “It’s OK — we’ll be fine.”
A long line is forming in San Francisco on Friday, June 29, 2007. New Harry Potter movie? No, it’s “iDay” — the line waiting to buy the first Apple iPhone ever to go on sale. Some people even camped in front of Apple Stores, waiting for the popular smartphone to go on sale.
Balsillie was not the only one who was dumbfounded. Steve Jobs had to repeat the description of the iPhone several times: “It’s an iPod, a phone and an internet communicator. An iPod, a phone…are you getting it?” Jobs used these memorable lines during the iPhone launch, which took place on Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2007, in front of thousands of Mac faithful.
Little did those Apple diehards know that they were witnessing the complete reinvention of Apple and the entire mobile phone industry. They also didn’t realize that backstage Apple engineers kept their fingers crossed that Jobs would not cause the iPhone to crash during the demo. That was due to the iPhone software being largely unfinished and buggy.
The iPhone launch was unusual in another way. Apple usually debuts products that are available shortly thereafter, typically less than six weeks later. The iPhone wouldn’t go on sale for another six months, an eternity in Silicon Valley terms.
Despite these hurdles, Apple sold 700,000 iPhones the first weekend it went on sale, which was marked by long lines in front of Apple Stores across the U.S. Long lines became an iPhone launch tradition, humorously dubbed “iDay” by a clever punster.
It has been 17 years since the original iPhone launched in 2007. More than 2.3 billion iPhones have been sold since, making Apple’s smartphone the most successful consumer product in history. The introduction of the iPhone thoroughly disrupted the cellular phone industry, speeding the demise of its two top brands at the time, Nokia and BlackBerry.
It also inspired its biggest competitor today, Android. The iPhone has introduced a number of innovations:
- Graphic user interface – The iPhone was the first smartphone to feature a graphic user interface (GUI), which relied on a touch screen and icons to simplify operation.
- Accelerometer – The first iPhone featured a built-in accelerometer that could detect the rotation of the device from portrait to landscape.
- Integrated browser – In another first, users could navigate the web with the iPhone’s integrated Safari web browser.
- High-resolution screen – The 2010 iPhone 4 was the first mobile device with a high-resolution “Retina Display,” boasting a pixel density of 326 pixels per inch. It also was the first iPhone to feature a front-facing camera. The combination of these two features helped popularize the “selfie.”
- Emoji – Apple’s 2011 launch of a Japanese market feature, emoji, helped establish a new global lingua franca of emoticons that revolutionized the social dialog. The 2018 launch of iOS 12 brought Memoji to the iPhone — animated emojis that could be customized to resemble the user.
- Fingerprint and face recognition – The 2013 iPhone 5s was the first smartphone to use fingerprint recognition, dubbed Touch ID. This was followed by the 2017 iPhone X, which ushered in face recognition, called Face ID. Both features allowed users to conveniently and securely unlock their phones.
That long record of innovation has endeared Apple’s iPhone among teenagers for the past decade. According to a Spring 2024 survey by Piper Sandler of 6,020 U.S. teens, a near-record 85% own iPhones.
Then there are those distinctive blue text message bubbles that distinguish iPhone users from Android users. When OkCupid asked its 55,000 Instagram followers whether they would message someone who didn’t respond with a blue bubble, 31% said they wouldn’t.
Could this be the inspiration for a new meme like the OK Boomer one? 😘
Ubertrends: Unwired, Digital Lifestyle
