Compared to today’s iPhone 12, the very first iPhone in 2007 was startlingly slow and incredibly limited — yet it changed the world.
It was on June 29, 2007, that the original iPhone went on sale in the US, and arguably that was the day that it truly began shaking up what users expected from a phone.
We and the phone industry had known all about it for over five months, but it wasn’t until you could buy it that the impact of this little device began to be felt.
The original iPhone
Most of the concerns and criticisms of the original iPhone now seem peculiar, but chiefly because the iPhone itself has retrained our ideas of what is normal. At the time, the best smartphones had certain key features that the iPhone lacked, and many people cared.
It was a big deal that the battery was sealed and couldn’t be changed. It was a big deal that the iPhone didn’t have a physical keyboard, and that you couldn’t add memory cards even if you can remember what those were for.
Curiously, it wasn’t a big deal that the iPhone shipped without an App Store. Certainly plenty of people wanted third-party apps, but that wasn’t on the list of reasons the iPhone was certain to fail.
One entirely valid and possible reason the iPhone was doomed was that it solely ran on AT&T. Unquestionably a limitation, and doubtlessly enough reason that some people didn’t buy, that exclusivity became part of why iPhone succeeded.
Apple went with AT&T because it — or rather the Cingular network that was then bought by AT&T — agreed to Apple’s demands for control. At the time, it was normal for networks to have at least a say in the hardware designs of phones that were going to use their cell service.
It was also normal for those networks to insist on their own apps being included on the devices. But Apple wasn’t having any of that, even if it meant starting off with just one network in the US.
Back then, it was also normal for the price of phones to be subsidised so that users got them cheaply at the start, and paid dearly over time. Apple initially sold the original iPhone for $499 and $599, depending on whether you had the 4GB or 8GB version.
Today the iPhone 12 starts at $799 with 64GB, and a carrier contract. The latest iPhone is actually substantially heavier than the original, at 162 grams compared to 135 grams.
But then it does come with a 6.1-inch display, instead of a 4.5-inch one. And a dual 12MP camera system instead of a single 2.0MP rear camera.
No one could have predicted where the iPhone line would go over the next 14 years, but then at the time very many believed it would go nowhere.
Steve Jobs presents the iPhone
There is much about the original iPhone presentation that gets missed today because of what we know happened next — and because of what we’ve forgotten about phones in 2007. Back then, we believed phones were an established technology and Steve Jobs worked his speech hard to change our mind.
Not only did he point to deficiencies in the phones we all knew and, if not loved, accepted, but he also positioned Apple extremely precisely. In truth, Apple had never done anything like the iPhone, but watch the speech and soon you’ll believe that the company had a legendary background in mobile devices.
We now know that the whole presentation was held together with string and prayers. Even so, it is a piece of precision work which does not just launch a device, it positions it.
And yet, at the time, enough people either weren’t convinced — or would rather not be convinced.
No chance of success
Microsoft’s then CEO Steve Ballmer famously ridiculed the iPhone for just about all the reasons it would then succeed and Windows phones wouldn’t.
“There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share,” he said in April, 2007. “No chance. It’s a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I’d prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get.”
Blackberry CEOs, at the time, were privately divided over the iPhone. Mike Lazaridis said of Apple that “these guys are really, really good.” Jim Balsillie said, “it’s OK, we’ll be fine.”
The technology industry is oddly conservative about changes, it tends to base its judgements on what has worked before. So, too, did much of the technology media industry.
Launch day
June 29, 2007, did without question appear to be an enormous success for Apple. There were queues everywhere, it looked like this was the smash hit that, well, it eventually was.
Things must’ve gone a little less well than hoped, however, because in September, Apple cut prices. It dropped the 4GB version and cut the 8GB from $599 to $399. If you were able to get your hands on one, unsold 4GB models were cut to $299.
Steve Jobs later reported having received hundreds of emails from angry buyers who’d paid the full price — and so Apple put things right. Or at least, it made an effort.
For a time, anyone who had paid the full price could have a $100 credit. That still meant they’d paid $100 more than later buyers, and it did not mean they got that cash back.
Nonetheless, if you had paid the full amount, you tended to not be unhappy with the phone itself. The price, certainly, but not the iPhone.
“As it turns out, much of the hype and some of the criticisms are justified,” wrote David Pogue in the New York Times. “The iPhone is revolutionary; it’s flawed. It’s substance; it’s style. It does things no phone has ever done before; it lacks features found even on the most basic phones.”
“Despite some flaws and feature omissions, the iPhone is, on balance, a beautiful and breakthrough handheld computer,” wrote Walter S. Mossberg and Katherine Boehret in the Wall Street Journal. “Its software, especially, sets a new bar for the smart-phone industry, and its clever finger-touch interface, which dispenses with a stylus and most buttons, works well, though it sometimes adds steps to common functions.”
According to Statista, Apple sold 1.9 million iPhones in 2007, despite not being available until the end of June. And despite not seeing a price cut until September.
It’s not possible to directly compare that year with the present day, as Apple ceased publishing sales numbers for the iPhone in 2018. However, in the latest data before that cut-off date, Apple had sold 216.76 million iPhones in 2017.
Short-lived and long-lived success
The original iPhone was discontinued on July 15, 2008, but it lives on in the gear collections of many Apple fans. It lives on in the iPhone 12 range.
And it lives on in the screens and the technology of just about every smartphone you can possibly buy today.
Maybe Samsung, Microsoft, Huawei, and the rest would have come up phones that were all-screen, all multi-touch displays, that revolutionized the world.
But they didn’t.
Apple did, and the iPhone is a rare case of when you can pinpoint the time that an entire industry changed. Maybe that date was the launch of the iPhone, maybe it was during the five months and 20 days we waited and other manufacturers scrambled.
Or maybe it was June 29, 2007.
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