In 2007, when Steve Jobs told the world that Apple had “reinvented the phone” and called it the iPhone, little did we know that he was actually being prophetic and not pushing more marketing spiel that tech companies are well-known to indulge in. The iPhone did change the world in more ways than one and had an impact that went beyond the realm of personal tech.
Over the past 15 years, the iPhone has been the benchmark of what a smartphone should be. So much so that for years, every other flagship phone that was launched dubbed itself an ‘iPhone killer’ though in hindsight none could vanquish the ‘Jesus phone’.
But behind the success of the iPhone was a complete reimagining of what a phone should do in a user’s hands. And that has been the real reason for the unprecedented success and impact of the Apple phone. Here are five ways in which it did this.
1. You can make a call too: Making a voice call or sending a message was just one of the functionalities of the iPhone. It was not the primary problem this phone was trying to solve. This meant there were many more reasons to pick up the phone beyond one’s regular communication needs.
2. One device, many uses: The iPhone could do a lot of things. It was your music player, camera, calendar, notepad and more. In the process, as the iPhone became popular across the world, it also killed a lot of other products from point-and-shoot cameras to portable music players and digital diaries.
3. See, no keyboard: A phone without physical keys was not something consumers knew was possible in 2007. When the iPhone was launched, many called it the phone’s Achilles heel. But the touch screen proved to be a better input for the phone and has stood the test of time. A popular brand like BlackBerry, which touted the keypad as its USP, is now nowhere to be seen.
4. We have an app for that: In 2008, when Apple launched its App Store with 500 apps, it was changing the world, one app at a time. Fourteen years and millions of apps later, this software revolution has empowered the global economy and given many a startup the platform to be successful. The Ubers, Evernotes and Angry Birds of the world would not have found the success they did without the App Store.
5. It’s a computer, idiot: The iPhone was never true to its name. It was, all along, a computer disguised as a smartphone. Now, millions of people around the world use the phone as their primary or only computing device. This change in mindset would not have been possible if the iPhone had not loaded people’s hands with so much computing power and versatility.
