There seems to be a lot of discussion about ten years of the iPhone - it's great success and how it changed mobile phones. Here are some of my thoughts and how I remember it a bit differently.
Ten years ago, January 9 2007, I stayed up for the Apple event; in Hong kong it was at 2 am. I loved watching Steve Jobs, and I had read about the rumours of an Apple phone, even then people had named it iPhone. Apple had already dipped it's toe in the phone waters with Motorola and it's razor phone that ran Apple's iTunes app. When Steve Jobs showed this off it was apparent that even he disliked it. So at the 2007 Apple event the buzz was in the air and Steve Jobs came out and played the audience and media like a father announcing a gift to his kids. There are several great videos on youtube to see this marvellous reveal and my words here really would not do it any justice. My final thoughts as I went to bed at 4:00 am was that the iPhone looked great, but so expensive; hundreds of dollars more than the most expensive Nokia or Motorola phone. Typical Apple - great hardware but too expensive for most.
Over the next few days and months I was answering questions.
"Yes, the camera is only 2MP when most expensive phones are 3MP".
"No video. My wife's friends have a Japanese Docomo phone that already has a Skype feature".
"Yes, i know your phone has a browser but the iPhone makes the pages look the same as on your computer. I don't know if they will use Flash videos, it has Youtube".
"Yep, so expensive and not available in Hong Kong. It was hard to see the advantages of the iPhone".
It was on sale on June 29 of that year and people finally got to use it ... an the were thrilled and disappointed. People had bought expensive headphones to use with their iPod but their headphones* could not be plugged into the iPhone. A lot of websites and videos would not play in the browser since the iPhone didn't use Flash*. It was not looking good for the iPhone. Certainly not the industry busting iPod.
In September 2007 Apple reduced the price of the iPhone models by $200*. This was the first of the many major selling points for the iPhone. The next year the headphone problem was solved and most headphones could be used. The App Store* went online in 2008. The camera has gone from being very average to among the best of any phone.
Links
*https://www.engadget.com/2007/06/30/iphone-doesnt-work-with-most-3rd-party-headphones/
*http://www.macworld.com/article/1059838/iphonepricecut.html
*https://www.wired.com/2008/11/adobe-flash-on/
*https://techcrunch.com/2008/07/10/app-store-launches-upgrade-itunes-now/