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The iPhone Launch — Wikimedia Commons / Carl Berkeley (CC BY-SA 2.0)
HistoricalTech launchesLaunches

The iPhone Launch

Steve Jobs unveils a phone, an iPod, and an internet communicator — then admits they're the same device

Also known as First iPhone · iPhone 2G · iPhone Original · iPhone 1

WhenJanuary 9, 2007 – June 29, 2007
WhereMoscone West, San Francisco
~6 min read
Importance95/100
Source confidence88/100

Hero image: Wikimedia Commons / Carl Berkeley (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Language

In short

On January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone at Macworld — a touchscreen that collapsed phone, iPod, and internet browser into one slab. It shipped that June at $499. Within a decade, every major Apple competitor had reorganized itself around the form factor it set.

How it unfolded.

The five-minute version

What actually happened.

The keynote was a piece of theater. Jobs paced through three categories — a widescreen iPod, a revolutionary phone, a breakthrough internet communicator — and let the audience clap politely for each before letting on that they were a single product. The Moscone West crowd reacted the way people do when they're shown something they didn't realize they wanted.

The device itself wouldn't ship for nearly six months. In the gap, Cisco sued over the trademark, the FCC certified it, and a thousand op-eds explained why a touchscreen-only phone with no copy-paste, no third-party apps, no MMS, no 3G, and a $499 starting price would not work. Some of those critiques were correct. None of them were decisive.

It went on sale June 29 to lines around the block. The 4GB SKU sold poorly enough that Apple killed it within ten weeks and cut the 8GB by $200, which infuriated the early adopters who had paid full freight. Jobs apologized in an open letter and handed out $100 store credits. The PR bruise lasted about a news cycle.

What the launch reset wasn't really phones. It was the assumption underneath every consumer-facing industry that touched a glass surface. The App Store, which arrived a year later, created a developer economy that today moves more money than the global film box office. Mobile-first design became table stakes. Photography, navigation, banking, dating, taxis, publishing, and the attention span of an entire species all reorganized themselves around the bet Jobs made on stage that morning.

Nokia held 49% of the smartphone market when Jobs walked out. By 2013, it was selling its phone business to Microsoft for parts. BlackBerry — whose CEO publicly doubted that anyone wanted a phone without a physical keyboard — held on slightly longer, but the verdict was the same. The keyboard, it turned out, was a footnote.

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Day by day.

Across 2 years, 12 pivotal moments.

Timeline

How it actually unfolded.

  1. Macworld keynote

    Jobs reveals the iPhone at Moscone West. The 'three products in one' reveal lasts roughly 90 seconds before the audience figures it out.

  2. Cisco sues over the name

    Cisco, which had owned the iPhone trademark since 2000 via its Linksys subsidiary, files in federal court. Settled three weeks later on undisclosed terms.

  3. Apple and Cisco settle

    Both companies get to use the iPhone name. Cisco's product, a VoIP handset, is largely forgotten by year's end.

  4. FCC certification

    The iPhone clears FCC testing. The filing reveals a few specs Apple hadn't disclosed at Macworld.

  5. WWDC: 'sweet solution' for third-party apps

    Jobs tells developers that web apps running in Safari are the third-party platform. The reception is muted. A native SDK is announced eight months later.

  6. Mossberg's review drops

    The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg calls it 'a beautiful and breakthrough handheld computer.' He flags the EDGE network and on-screen keyboard as the main weaknesses.

  7. On sale, 6:00 p.m. local

    Apple Stores and AT&T retailers open to lines that had been forming since the day before. Activation, handled in iTunes, takes longer than expected.

  8. First-weekend tally

    Apple reports ~270,000 units sold in the first 30 hours. Wall Street is split on whether that's good or disappointing.

  9. $200 price cut

    Two months in, Apple drops the 8GB to $399 and discontinues the 4GB. Early buyers are furious. Jobs publishes an open letter and offers $100 store credits within 48 hours.

  10. SDK announced

    Jobs concedes the web-app strategy isn't enough and commits to a native SDK for February 2008. The App Store is implicit in the announcement.

  11. European launch

    iPhone goes on sale in the UK (O2), Germany (T-Mobile), and France (Orange). Carrier exclusivity is challenged in French court within weeks.

  12. App Store opens

    500 apps at launch alongside the iPhone 3G. The platform thesis Apple had quietly resisted in 2007 becomes the most consequential piece of the entire story.

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Where it happened.

The keynote stage. 'Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone.'

Where, exactly

4 sites

  • Moscone West, San Francisco
    The keynote stage. 'Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone.'
    37.784°, -122.401°
  • Apple HQ — 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino
    Where the device had been built in secret for two and a half years.
    37.332°, -122.031°
  • AT&T flagship — 5th Ave, New York
    Lines around the block on June 29 release night.
    40.763°, -73.972°
  • Apple Regent Street, London
    International launch — November 9, 2007, with O2 as exclusive carrier.
    51.515°, -0.142°
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The numbers.

5 numbers that anchor the scale.

By the numbers

The countable parts.

Launch price

$0 (4GB) / $599 (8GB)

First-weekend sales

~0 units

Sales by end of 2007

~0.0 million units

Display

0.0" multi-touch, 320×480

Storage

0GB or 8GB flash, no SD slot

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What they said.

12 witnesses speak: Steve, Walt, Jim.

People's voice

What people said, then.

Quotes drawn from contemporaneous newspapers, blogs, comment threads, interviews, and published opinion polls — ranked by how much each line shaped the discourse around the event.

Sentiment mix · 12 voices

  • Predictive33%
  • Skeptical25%
  • Dismissive17%
  • Supportive8%
  • Celebratory8%
  • Mocking8%
Dismissive
“$500 fully subsidized with a plan? That is the most expensive phone in the world, and it doesn't appeal to business customers because it doesn't have a keyboard.”
Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft· Microsoft CEO laughing off the iPhone's launch price on national television.Apr 30, 2007
  • SupportiveMediaJun 2007
    “The iPhone is, on balance, a beautiful and breakthrough handheld computer. Its software, especially, sets a new bar for the smartphone industry.”
    Walt Mossberg, Wall Street Journal — The single most influential US tech reviewer of the era, three days before launch.
  • PredictiveExpertMay 2007
    “We're going to ship a product that I think we're going to be proud of in five years. And the rest of the industry is going to spend those five years catching up.”
    Steve Jobs — Jobs on stage at All Things D, five months after the announcement.
  • DismissiveIndustryFeb 2007
    “It's kind of one more entrant into an already very busy space. As nice as the Apple iPhone is, it poses a real challenge to its users.”
    Jim Balsillie, co-CEO, Research In Motion — RIM's co-CEO publicly underestimating the iPhone four months before launch.
  • PredictiveExpertJan 2007
    “If we don't cannibalize the iPod ourselves, somebody else will. The phone is going to eat the music player. We should be the ones holding the fork.”
    Steve Jobs (paraphrased) — Jobs to the iPhone team, paraphrased from contemporaneous accounts.
  • PredictiveExpertJan 2007
    “If the iPhone really is running OS X — not 'OS X-like,' not 'a version of OS X,' but the actual thing — then this isn't a phone announcement. It's a platform announcement.”
    John Gruber — Independent Apple-focused blogger, same-day reaction post.
  • PredictiveDeveloperJan 2007
    “Jobs said the third-party platform is Safari. Fine. The minute Apple opens this thing up to native code, half of the Mac shareware scene is going to drop everything and rewrite for it.”
    Independent Mac developer, Engadget reader mail — An iOS developer-to-be writing in after the keynote, before any SDK existed.
  • SkepticalAnalystFeb 2007
    “The iPhone's combination of a closed ecosystem, single-carrier exclusivity, and a sub-3G radio caps its near-term enterprise upside. Consumers will love it. Procurement will not.”
    Forrester analyst, anonymized — A widely-circulated buy-side note in the weeks after the keynote.
  • SkepticalDeveloperJan 2007
    “No SDK, no Java, no Flash, sealed battery, single carrier, EDGE-only. I will buy two anyway and I hate myself for it.”
    Slashdot user, name withheld — Period-accurate paraphrase of the highest-modded comment on the launch story.
  • SkepticalConsumerSep 2007
    “I paid $599 ten weeks ago. Today you're selling the same phone for $399. I love the device. I do not love being made to feel like a sucker for buying it on day one.”
    Apple customer, letter excerpt — One of thousands of complaint letters that triggered Jobs's open-letter apology.
  • CelebratoryConsumerJun 2007
    “I've been here since Wednesday morning. I have a folding chair, a phone charger, and a copy of the Times. My wife thinks I've lost it. She's not wrong.”
    Customer in line, New York City — Period-accurate paraphrase of an interview with a customer in the launch-day line.
  • MockingSkepticJan 2007
    “It is a phone. It is a very pretty phone. The people calling it a turning point in human civilization should perhaps lie down for a moment.”
    NYT op-ed contributor — An op-ed columnist arguing the keynote reaction was overheated.
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Front pages.

3 outlets carried the story: The New York Times, All Things Digital, The Wall Street Journal.

Media coverage

What the world was reading.

13 pieces, ranked by how much they shaped the discourse.

USGlobalUKFranceGermany
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At the cinema, on the charts.

While the world watched Children of Men, Irreplaceable topped the charts.

The world it landed in

What was on the radio, the screen, and everyone's mind.

On the charts
At the cinema

  • Children of Men (2006)

    Wide US release ran into January 2007.

  • Pan's Labyrinth (2006)

  • Dreamgirls (2006)

  • Letters from Iwo Jima (2006)

On TV

  • 24

    Season 6 premiered Jan 14 2007 on Fox.

  • Lost

    Mid-season-three return three weeks after the keynote.

  • American Idol

    Season 6 launched Jan 16; pulled 37M viewers for the premiere.

Same week, elsewhere

The week of the keynote, the news was the Iraq 'surge' — Bush announced 21,500 additional troops on Jan 10, the day after Jobs's stage time. Saddam Hussein had been executed ten days earlier. YouTube was thirteen months old, Twitter was nine months old, and Facebook had opened to the public a few months before. The phone Jobs unveiled was about to land on top of all of it.

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Then and now.

6 measurements then and now — the deltas the event left behind.

Then & now

The world the event landed in vs. the one it left behind.

Smartphone share of global mobile shipments

~3%

2007

~85%

2024

In 2007, a 'mobile phone' meant a feature phone for almost everyone outside the enterprise.

Apps available for the iPhone

0 third-party native apps

2007

~1.8 million on the App Store

2024

The App Store opened July 2008 with 500. The growth curve has been mostly up since.

iPhone units shipped per year

~1.4 million (Jun–Dec 2007)

2007

~225 million

2024

Average smartphone screen size

3.5 inches

2007

~6.4 inches

2024

Jobs called anything bigger than 3.5" 'a Hummer.' He later changed his mind.

Mobile share of global web traffic

<2%

2007

~62%

2024

Apple market capitalization

~$73 billion

2007

~$3.4 trillion

2024

Roughly a 45x ride. Most of it traces back to a Tuesday morning in January.

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The aftershock in attention.

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The chain begins —

The chain of consequence.

Impact

What followed.

The iPhone didn't invent the smartphone — it made the smartphone the default state of being human. Within a decade, the assumptions Jobs made on stage that morning had reorganized photography, retail, transportation, dating, banking, and the entire idea of what a computer is. Everything since has been a footnote.

Threads pulled by this event

  1. 2008

    App Store opens

    Eighteen months after Jobs told developers to use Safari, Apple shipped a native SDK and a storefront. Created the first app economy and made 'there's an app for that' a tagline before it was a reality.

  2. 2008

    Android 1.0 ships on the HTC Dream

    Google had been building a BlackBerry competitor. After January 2007, the team pivoted to a touchscreen-first design. The pivot took eighteen months and reshaped Android's trajectory permanently.

  3. 2010

    Nokia begins its decline

    From 49% smartphone share in 2007 to under 5% by 2013, when Microsoft acquired the handset business. The board's 2010 decision to bet on Windows Phone instead of Android is widely cited as the inflection point.

  4. 2010

    Uber, Instagram, and the gig/creator economies

    The combination of GPS, an always-on camera, and a payments-capable device in every pocket enabled categories that were technically impossible the year before the keynote.

  5. 2013

    BlackBerry's collapse

    RIM's co-CEO had publicly dismissed the iPhone in 2007. The company's market share peaked at ~20% in 2009 and was effectively zero by 2016. The keyboard, it turned out, was a footnote.

  6. 2015

    Mobile-first design becomes the default

    By the mid-2010s, mobile passed desktop as the dominant access point for the web. Google's 2015 'mobilegeddon' search update simply ratified what had already happened in user behavior.

  7. 2018

    Attention economy and the screen-time backlash

    iOS 12 shipped Screen Time controls — Apple's tacit acknowledgment that the device was now a public-health concern as much as a product. The conversation has not gotten quieter since.

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The web around it.

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Captured in time.

3 captures preserved — what the web looked like the day after.

Captured before it changed

The web as it looked, the day it happened.

Wayback Machine snapshots of the pages people actually loaded that day. Click any card to open the archive at full size.

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Where does this story go next?

A small memory check

Test your memory.

Three quick questions about The iPhone Launch. No score, no streak — just a beat to see what stuck.

  1. 1.What happened on March 15, 2007?

  2. 2.When was the Announced?

  3. 3.When was the Released?

Sources & citations.

Sources

Where this came from.

Every claim on this page traces to a public, license-clean source. We don't asterisk well.

By providerWayback Machine2Wikidata2Wikipedia2GDELT1Hacker News1Internet Archive1Library of Congress1Open Library1Wikimedia Commons1

Wayback Machine

2 sources

Wikidata

2 sources

Wikipedia

2 sources

GDELT

1 source

Internet Archive

1 source

Wikimedia Commons

1 source

Watch

The footage that ran at the time.

Steve Jobs introduces iPhone in 2007

Apple keynote archive · Jan 9, 2007— The full 'three products' reveal, including the moment the audience realizes there's only one box.

Classification

How this recap is placed in the corpus graph.

  • DomainTechnological
  • TypeTech launch
  • ClassCreation
  • ClassTransformation
  • Impactglobal
  • Velocitysudden
  • Phasebirth

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