The iPhone is a multimedia, Internet-enabled cell phone designed and marketed by Apple Inc. It has a multi-touch screen with virtual keyboard and buttons. The iPhone’s functions contain those of a camera phone and a portable media player (”iPod”), in addition to text messaging and visual voicemail. It also offers Internet services including e-mail, web browsing, and local Wi-Fi connectivity. It is a quad-band mobile phone that uses the GSM standard, hence has international capability. It supports the Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE) technology for higher velocity and reliability.
Following the triumph of iPod, Apple announced the iPhone in January 2007. The announcement was preceded by rumors and speculations that circulated for numerous months. The iPhone was introduced, first in the United States on June 29, 2007 with much media frenzy and then in the United Kingdom, Germany and France in November 2007. It was named Time magazine’s “Invention of the Year” in 2007. A new version of Apple’s iPhone will be introduced in 2008 that is qualified of operating on quicker 3G cellular networks.
History
The genesis of the iPhone began with Apple CEO Steve Jobs’s direction that Apple engineers investigate touch-screens. At the time he had been considering having Apple work on tablet PCs.
Notes made by Jobs in April 2003 at the “D: All Things Digital” executive conference expressed his belief that tablet PCs and traditional PDAs were not good choices as high-demand markets for Apple to enter, despite many requests made to him that Apple create another PDA. He did believe that cell phones were going to become important devices for portable information access.
On January 9, 2007, Jobs announced the iPhone at the Macworld convention, receiving substantial media interest, and on June 11, 2007 announced at the Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference that the iPhone would support third-party applications using the Safari engine on the device. Third-parties would create the Web 2.0 applications and users would access them via the Internet. On October 17, 2007 Apple announced that an iPhone software development kit would be made open in February 2008, allowing developers to create native applications that take full advantage of the iPhone’s application programming interface.
Spanish group SevenClick, based on information from a director at Telefonica, announced on their technology blog that Telefonica Spain expects to be shipping 3G iPhones by May 2008.
The iPhone generally prevents access to its media player and web features unless it has also been activated as a phone with an authorized carrier. On July 3, 2007, Jon Lech Johansen reported on his blog that he had successfully bypassed this requirement and unlocked the iPhone’s other features with a combination of custom software and modification of the iTunes binary. He published the software and offsets for others to use.
On July 25, 2007 Apple announced in their 2007 Q3 sales statement and conference call that they sold 270,000 iPhones in the first 30 hours on launch weekend. AT&T reported 146,000 iPhones activated in the same time period. Apple anticipated selling their millionth iPhone in the first full quarter of availability, and anticipates selling 10 million iPhones by the end of their 2008 fiscal year. On September 10, 2007, Apple announced sales of 1 million iPhones. This was followed by Apple’s 2007 fourth quarter balance announcement on October 22, 2007 which put total iPhone sales at 1.39 million with 1.12 million sold that quarter.
On November 21, 2007, T-Mobile announced it would sell the phone “unlocked” and without a T-Mobile contract, caused by a preliminary injunction against T-Mobile put in place by their competitor Vodafone. In Germany, a company is not allowed to lock the SIM card to itself. On December 4, 2007, a German court decided to grant T-Mobile exclusive rights to sell the iPhone with the SIM card locked, overturning the temporary injunction.In addition, T-Mobile will unlock the iPhone at the termination of a customer’s contract.
On December 1, 2007, Tusmobil, Slovenian mobile operator, started selling “unlocked” iPhones without certified contract with Apple, which caused a lot of confusion with Apple Europe, regional media and regional Apple representatives.