Taking a Look at the History of the Apple iPhone

Taking a Look at the History of the Apple iPhone

Apple has always been known for developing trendy and cutting edge electronic consumer products that attract a large number of followers. Before the Apple iPhone was released in June 2007 there was a lot of commotion about what it would be like and what type of particular details the new product would have. The great thing about the Apple iPhone was so original and innovative, that people couldn’t wait to get one because it would be like having three devices all rolled -up in one: an iPod, cell phone and internet device.

The Beginnings

The reported known beginning of the Apple iPhone came from a meeting headed by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, with his engineers, tasking them to research touch screen capability, at the time he was probably going to use it to advance the Apple PC tablet. In April of 2003 he announced that traditional PDAs and tablet PCs were not the direction Apple was going to move forward with.

New innovations perhaps lie in the realm of cell phones, and technologies that are connected to them and should be improved upon. The appearance of the new Apple iPhone was announced in January, 2007 at the MacWorld Expo with a release date for June 2007. At another conference that same year, it was revealed that the Apple iPhone would sustain third parties which would create Web 2.0 applications and that users could access this through the internet.

Availability to the Public and Still More Developments

When the Apple iPhone went public on June 29, 2007 hundreds of people began to line up in front of stores before opening hours in order to be amongst the first let in, so they could quickly grab one. The iPhone was originally released in two variations, one, with a flash drive of 4 GB for $499 and the 8 GB version for $599, however the sales of the 8 GB far outnumbered the other one, which was eventually discontinued.

Moreover, as a further development, the price was radically reduced by $200 in September, for which Apple was quite widely attacked because the sudden drop in price was believed to be unfair. When the Apple iPhone was first released, it was expected to be a great deal more popular than it actually was.

For instance, they expected the first weekend sales to range from anywhere between 200,000 - 700,000, in products sold. To their disappointment only around 145,000 devices were activated and registered that first weekend.

Moreover, the applications of Apple iPhone’s were originally only available to those who made a two-year subscription with AT&T, and that included some offers that would not pay off for everyone. There was also wide media coverage of a 300-page bill, after which AT&T made a change in its billing practices.

The Apple iPhone was released internationally in France, the United Kingdom, Europe and Germany, towards the end of 2007. The international release went well, except for in Europe because Apple decided to only allow one company to sell the iPhone and that seem to be a potential legal issue.