Technology · 2007
The smartphone: the iPhone puts the Internet in every pocket
Moscone West, San Francisco (USA)
On 9 January 2007, at the Macworld conference in San Francisco, Apple's Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone as "a widescreen iPod with touch controls", "a revolutionary mobile phone" and "a breakthrough Internet communicator" in one device; it went on sale in the United States on 29 June 2007. It dropped the physical keyboard and stylus for a multi-touch screen worked with the fingers, and in July 2008 Apple opened the App Store, letting outside developers sell programs for it.
Google's Android phones soon followed the same pattern.
Why it mattered
The smartphone turned the phone into a pocket computer, camera, map, wallet and window on the Internet. Smartphones outsold ordinary mobile phones by early 2013, when shipments passed 1 billion a year, and by 2025 82 percent of people aged 10 and over owned a mobile phone. In countries such as India, Kenya, South Africa, the Philippines and Pakistan most Internet users went online by phone rather than by computer, and in 2008 mobile phones overtook personal computers as the most common way to reach the Internet.
Elsewhere
Earlier smartphones, such as BlackBerry's, were aimed mainly at business users and relied on keyboards or styluses; the iPhone was aimed at the general public and quickly became Apple's most successful product.
Related
- The world in 2000: Into a New Millennium chapter
- 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan previous moment · 2001–2021
- Global financial crisis next moment · 2007–2009