Exactly fifteen years ago, on January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs took the stage at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. to announce the first iPhone.
It is still possible to remember the event in videos uploaded to YouTube like this, and it’s an experience I’d recommend to any mobile fan.
This is how Steve Jobs introduced the new device:
This is the day I’ve been waiting for two and a half years. Every now and then, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything. And Apple has been — well, first of all, you’re very lucky if you work on one of these products during your career. Apple was very lucky. It has been able to bring some of these products to the world.
1984, we launched the Macintosh. It wasn’t just Apple that changed. This completely changed the computer industry. In 2001, we launched the first iPod, which not only changed the way we listen to music, it changed the entire music industry.
Well, today we are going to present three revolutionary products in this category. The first is an iPod with a screen and touch controls. The second is a revolutionary cell phone. And the third is an innovative device for communicating with the Internet. An iPod, a telephone and an Internet communicator. An iPod, a phone… can you get it? They are not three separate devices, we call this device an iPhone. Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone and here it is.
Was he right. The smartphone revolution started with the iPhone, which put a small personal computer in the hands of millions of people.
In the book “Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution“Rumor has it Jobs was very bold in presenting and showing the iPhone in January 2007.
Not only was he introducing a new type of phone, he was doing it with a prototype that worked with difficulties. During the presentation, Jobs was able to run the demos without any problems, and Apple engineers fixed the bugs over the next few months.
Contrary to what happens today, the iPhone did not go on sale after a few days, but had to wait until the end of June to get it. The lines that formed at Apple Stores were incredible.
Queue outside the Apple Store on 5th Avenue in New York City on June 29, 2007
Fifteen years later, dozens of competitors have emerged, but the iPhone is still in excellent health. The company recently reached $3 trillion in equity trading, making it the first North American company to reach this milestone.
A recent report by asymco says Apple has sold more than 2 billion units of iPhones. According to this report, Apple’s success is based on maintaining the philosophy of its founder, Steve Jobs, who believed that Apple should develop products and features that consumers didn’t know they needed.