Last Sunday, December 9, it was 15 years since one of the greatest milestones in mobile telephony: Steve Jobs presented the original iPhone during a keynote that has been recorded for posterity. And I was lucky to get that imported phone, a smartphone that it changed my use of telephony in particular and technology in general.
We have become accustomed to the fact that mobile telephony hardly changes from one year to the next, changes basically come down to higher horsepower, design variations and, above all, to pressure from prices at both ends: the range of 200 euros and that of 1,000. But there was a time when there was room to reinvent telephony and turn the entire industry upside down. Let’s go back to 2.007.
A secret mobile that managed to appear almost miraculously
The development of the original iPhone was forged in secret and during a journey as bumpy as it was fraught with challenges for the Apple team that got involved. This process of years culminated in the long-awaited evolution from the iPod, a musical device that had become the icon of Apple, to the iPhone, a mobile that in 2007 he broke schemes and that has ended up being the jewel of the catalog.
Apple changed the course of mobile telephony by dint of creating a Huge touchscreen smartphone with capacitive technology. The trend in 2007 was for mobile phones with a numeric keypad, BlackBerry smartphones with a physical QWERTY keyboard, and Nokia smartphones with Symbian which generally offered a button interface.
During the keynote in which Steve Jobs presented the original iPhone, we all attended live what would be the biggest turnaround in technology. And not only in mobile phones, that touch screens with virtual buttons, icons and applications have even expanded to refrigerators. As Andy Rubin confessed years later, the father of Android completely changed its operating system after the introduction of the iPhone.
Apple created a spectacular mobile, but did not know how to take advantage of it until outside developers taught it. I had the first iPhone, I managed to buy it from import. This one seemed impressive at first and almost useless after the first few hours of use.: It had few applications, you could hardly do anything with it other than surf, listen to music or watch YouTube. In short: it was nothing more than a phone with a giant screen. Luckily there was the jailbreak.
The original iPhone had hardly any standard apps and lacked the App Store from which to download new software.
After that first little time alone with the original software, it didn’t take me long to Jailbreak it and install what was really worthwhile to the iPhone: Installer. That first store for the iPhone opened the door to applications, both free and paid. This was the beginning of Apple’s great milestone: the App Store.
Apple knew how to bring together all the best of telephony on the iPhone
After that original iPhone, Apple established the strategy of annually renewing its smartphone, introducing more power in each iteration, increasing performance and expanding the device’s software options. With the jump to iPhone OS 2.0 came the iPhone 3G and the App Store.
Once the official store was up, and after the iPhone was finally internationalized (the 3G arrived in Spain with Movistar), having an iPhone went from anecdote to something progressively more common. Apps and games took advantage of the tactile possibilities of the screen, you no longer had to fight with the Jailbreak and the quality of that software grew to levels that would not have been thought of in smartphones. This ended up infecting the rest of the manufacturers, which changed the trend of telephony.
Although Apple achieved a revolutionary product that, as a whole, was unique, the truth is that its separate elements already existed on the market. The smartphone had become popular thanks to BlackBerry, Nokia had an application store for its Symbian (like BlackBerry), PDA devices offered touch screens (resistive and with stylus), there were mobiles capable of taking photos (my beloved Nokia 7650, for example), playing on the mobile was quite common (the Nokia N-Gage was crowned as the first smartphone console) and even instant messaging, key in any mobile of today, it was available to almost anyone (the BBM of BlackBerry).
Apple knew how to combine the best of its ecosystem (iTunes and iPod) in a single device, creating a layer of software that has been expanding without losing the premises with which the iPhone was born: exclusivity, control, value for the user and a progressive drift towards services.
16 generations later, the iPhone remains the majority choice for the highest range of phones. It is a recognizable brand anywhere in the world
Throughout the 16 generations We have witnessed a constant evolution from beginnings with practically no competition to a present day where, despite having dozens of opponents, Apple remains the beacon to follow, the powerful brand that not only dominates the exchanges worldwide, but also the trends in technology. All despite the fact that the company itself continues to be inspired by the rest, as happened during the birth of the first iPhone.
The iPhone never had so much competition, but it is still king
Apple remains in third place in terms of mobile phone manufacturers. This classification fluctuates around the first classified: Samsung, Xiaomi and Apple; to the detriment of Huawei, which is already almost disappeared (always according to the number of mobile phones distributed and estimated). However, Apple tends to sweep the iPhone in the segment of the highest range, it is also the brand that sneaks the largest number of mobiles in the top positions worldwide.
Android became the most widely used mobile operating system in the world, the figures are clear: 70.01% share for androids and 29.24% for iOS (Statcounter data; estimates). This abysmal difference in use is also transferred to the number of devices: during 2021, more than 500 Android smartphones were presented worldwide (data from GSMArena) compared to the four iPhones that Apple unveiled in October. Despite the mixed numbers, Apple is the brand that makes the most money from its phones. And the one that sets the most trend in the market.
Android is the most used mobile operating system in the world, but there is no brand that manages to capture as much market with a model as Apple with the iPhone and iOS
Fifteen years have passed since Steve Jobs introduced the original iPhone. It doesn’t seem like much, but the truth is that mobile technology has radically changed since January 9, 2007. We keep calling, using apps, sending instant messages, taking photos, from devices with a gigantic screen that little resembles that original iPhone. Even so, the DNA is still almost intact, we’ll see if it can last for another fifteen years. Despite being one of the most important companies in the world, Apple has more and more enemies. Even she herself begins to be.