Happy 15th birthday to all of us
It was the iPhone's 15th birthday this week. It went on sale on June 29, 2007 - and the gifts that have come out of this technology keep on giving. And I don’t just mean that for Apple or iPhone users. Apple’s innovative approach is something that raises our expectations of what is possible.
When the first version came out, it faced huge competition from all the established players. There was Nokia and Blackberry and Motorola (and a little bit of Microsoft). All these companies were shipping millions of devices. The number of models was mind-numbing.
Blackberry was focused on the business market with a few critical business apps and stellar engineering. Meanwhile, Nokia led the competition in creating the smallest phone. Every mobile phone company tried to create some kind of edge. These were days.
Then came the iPhone and it made them all obsolete.
Why was that? A few reasons:
Ease of use, with an intuitive interface. I vividly remember when my youngest daughter held an iPod Touch for the first time, when she was 3 years old. Without any help started using it. No manual, no instructions. She could just use it.
Applications. The Apple App Store has around 2 million apps available for download. They copied directly from the Microsoft playbook, without chanting developers, developers, developers. Apple allowed everyone to become an iPhone developer and start making money by publishing it on the Apple Store.
Multimedia. Playing music, watching videos, taking pictures and videos, reading books. It is easy to buy, download, consume and share any content.
Web browsing. Accessing the Internet (something we take for granted now) was suddenly so easy.
Payment. Your phone became your credit card.
Health device. Supporting a healthy lifestyle with monitoring your physical activities and vital signs.
Communication. Phone, messaging, sharing, mobile hotspot.
Navigation. With its built-in GPS and maps, you couldn't get lost.
Siri. Your virtual assistant, who is now learning how to carry on conversations.
eCommerce. Aside from its own Apple store, anybody selling anything can make it available to buy using a mobile device.
Gaming console. Yes, I mentioned apps and multimedia and eCommerce. Do you remember Pokémon?
Computer in your pocket. The future is here…
Disruption of other industries. It helped to disrupt industries which otherwise would be impossible or very difficult to do. Uber and Lyft are good examples.
That’s just a short list of things which the iPhone does.
Yes, for each of its features, you can find a device which can do any particular thing better, or did it before it was introduced on the iPhone. It doesn't matter any more. It is on iPhone now. Apple was able to masterfully combine hardware, software, services and lifestyle in one device.
What will the coming years bring us? The Apple M chip series offers us a hint of what we can expect. It has a dedicated neural network hardware and an image signal processor. Your future phone will see better. It will better understand you. It will integrate you to your digital surroundings better - and Siri will become your confidant.
The iPhone is a prime example of what success looks like in terms of long term strategic thinking, technology innovation,marketing process and great execution. It’s something which every company should try to emulate as their recurrent pattern.