Apple Iphone

A Brief History of the Apple iPhone

Apple has a long standing reputation for always coming out with modern products that are geared to cater to the masses. Already before the release of Apple iPhone in June 2007, guesses had been made widely about the outlook, the specifications and about the general properties of the product. It stands to reason, because the Apple iPhone is one of the most innovative products that joins together the technology of iPods, a radical cell phone with a useful internet device, all this combined is like having three products in one.

The Beginnings

The vision for the Apple iPhone was eventually thought of after Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, had a conference meeting with some of the engineers to start researching ways to develop the touch screen which was most likely intended for Apple’s tablet PC. 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. During another conference later that same year, the Apple iPhone was announced that it would be able to connect with third parties creating Web 2.0 applications which users could use for internet access.

Made Public and More Developments

Apple iPhone eventually went on sale June 29, 2007 in the United States, and hundreds of people reportedly lined up in front of the shops to be able to grab the new Apple iPhone as soon as possible. When it was first released there were two types to choose from: one with a flash drive of 4GB for $499 and the other with 8GB for $599 however, the sales for the 8GB exceeded the other version so much that they suspended all manufacturing of the 4GB.

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. The popularity of the Apple iPhone in the beginning was by no means as great as expected.

Apple anticipated the first weekend sales to come in around 200,000 to 700,000 devices sold to the public. But just roughly around 145,000 activations were registered for the first weekend.

One downfall was that the applications offered on the Apple iPhone, could only be activated buy getting a two year subscription with AT&T, which was a restriction many people did not appreciate. There was also wide media coverage of a 300-page bill, after which AT&T made a change in its billing practices.

Apple iPhone was launched in Europe by the end of 2007, in Germany, the United Kingdom and France. In Europe the Apple iPhone was only made available to the public through one preselected company and that seem to raise some legal concerns.