It is exactly five years since the death last year of Apple ceo Steve Jobs the first iPhone announced. The iPhone picked up in that time, a large share of the market and in the meantime it is the product that Apple has the most revenue yields.
Jobs presented the first iPhone during his keynote at MacWorld in 2007. The announcement came as a surprise; there were in the period before lots of rumors about a phone from Apple. The announcement was not accompanied by a rapid release; the iPhone arrived in June 2007, and only in the United States. The first iPhone is never in the Netherlands. The iPhone 3G was the first Apple smartphone to be in the Dutch shops was available. The iPhone grew within a few years to become the most lucrative Apple product. A large part of Apples revenue comes from the sale of iPhones and later iPads.
For the announcement, many thought Apple an iPod with call function on the market. From the biography of Steve Jobs, written by Walter Isaacson, it wasn’t far from the truth. In fact, Apple is busy with two versions of the iPhone. The first one was an iPod with call function, while the second is a small version of the tablet computer that Apple is in development. That development eventually led to the iPad in 2010.
It was not the first time that Apple had been working on the development of a phone. Already in the eighties had the manufacturer a phone in development. At the time, there are also patent applications for the inventions to protect.
The iPhone made the announcement particularly impressed by the touchscreen interface that the fingers could be controlled. Smartphones had at the time, not a touchscreen or a touchscreen that operated had to be with a stylus. Also multitouch was an innovative concept, such as the zoom in by spreading two fingers.
The first iPhone ran on a lot of points behind on the competition. So had the first model do not have a fast mobile internet via 3g, the gps was missing and the camera had no video function. A front-facing camera, at that time fairly common on high-end smartphones, was missing also. Also, the software was far from complete; things like multitasking, push and copy/paste was missing on the unit.
The Apple smartphone has in many ways had great impact on the market for smartphones. So used the iPhone more data by the user-friendly browser that all web pages are displaying. It brought internet subscriptions to smartphones more in vogue, partly because at that time, flat-fee subscriptions were presented. Meanwhile, providers of them have come back and are all over the world unlimited data transfer re-entered.
In addition, the iPhone has a central distribution for apps made popular. What was new was that the concept was not. So had Nokia earlier a central downloadwinkel for Symbian apps, but the apps names by the many iPhone users with internet access and the easy way of paying via iTunes a high flight. By now, all smartphones a central downloadwinkel from the device can be accessed.
The iPhone has, due to the high price, a loose iPhone of the latest generation costs are often a minimum of 600-650 euros, never a high market share obtained. The iPhone has been for some years worldwide and in the Netherlands a stable market share of between 10 and 20 percent. In popularity has Googles mobile operating system Android, the iPhone overshadowed. Android has a global market share of around 50 percent.
The latest iPhone model is the iPhone 4S, in October, that came out last year. The 4S includes voice control via Siri, has a dualcore processor and an 8-megapixel camera. For 2012, many analysts predict a ‘iPhone 5’, with a refreshed design. The release would be planned for this autumn.
