On this day – 9th January 2007 – The first iPhone is launched

When talking about the flashpoint of the 90’s and 00’s, we talk about medical advancements, key dates and key people. However, there is one thing that has dictated human life more than anything else over that period; technology.

Whether, it’s the internet, personal computers or mobile phones, it has come a long way during those two decades. However, it was 2007 that sparked a massive advancement for mobile phones. While Nokia, Samsung and Sony were making ground on he mobile field, Steve Jobs and Apple were about to blow the whole of the market open and release the iPhone.

In 2018, we of course know that the iPhone is there to plan, order and be an integral part of people’s modern day to day life. However, in 2007, it was a shot in the dark and at a hefty price of $599, it’s not difficult to see why Apple only sold 1.1 million in the first quarter of 2007. (Data from Statistica.com)

To put this into perspective, the peak sale figure of iPhones worldwide was at the start of 2017, when the number was at 78 million iPhone sales. This shows how far this one product has come, all the way from a plan from Steve Jobs to taking over a global market.

Since Apple having a global market already, it wasn’t a massive shock that they were to enter the mobile phone market back in 2007. What was a shock though, was the fact Apple have risen to be one of the most valuable companies on the planet and that the iPhone has sold over a billion models over it’s decade in production.

With the iPhone X starting to roll out of production at the start of this year, it’s unclear at whether Apple’s success will carry on. Statistica showed at the end of 2017 that the sales of iPhone’s dropped 32 million and fell to a yearly low of 41 million phones globally.

This might be partly to do with the price, as the iPhone X has come onto the world market at the monumental price of £1,100. For an iPhone, this is the most expensive model by far and with issues surrounding the ethics of Apple, public perceptions might be at an all-time low too.

After admitting to purposefully slowing down old versions of the iPhone, the sales started to drop, and the public reaction wasn’t a good one.

Will this lead to the Iphone X flopping in the 2018 statistics and lead people to switch to Android or even the Windows operating system phones?

By Patrick Gouldsbrough