Monday, September 29, 2008

A Quick Recap of Apple iPhones Origins

Taking a Look at the History of the Apple iPhone

Apple has a long standing reputation for always coming out with modern products that are geared to cater to the masses. Already before the release of Apple iPhone in June 2007, guesses had been made widely about the outlook, the specifications and about the general properties of the product. It was no surprise, that what had people talking was the idea of having an incredible new ground-breaking device, that would be an iPod, mobile phone and tool for accessing the internet all in one.

Launching Apple iPhones

The vision for the Apple iPhone was eventually thought of after Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, had a conference meeting with some of the engineers to start researching ways to develop the touch screen which was most likely intended for Apple’s tablet PC. However, in April 2003, he declared in a conference that the development of traditional PDAs or tablet PCs was not the way ahead for Apple.

The new direction was to move forward in evolving the technologies used in cell phones and the options provided with them. In January 2007 during the MacWorld Expo, Apple announced it’s soon to be released new iPhone product would be available by June 2007. At another conference that same year, it was revealed that the Apple iPhone would sustain third parties which would create Web 2.0 applications and that users could access this through the internet.

Consumer Ready and Future Developments

It was on June 29, 2007 that the Apple iPhone was put on sale for the public and people came out in full force, lining up in front of stores to be able to get one as soon as possible. When it was first released there were two types to choose from: one with a flash drive of 4GB for $499 and the other with 8GB for $599 however, the sales for the 8GB exceeded the other version so much that they suspended all manufacturing of the 4GB.

Moreover, as a further development, the price was radically reduced by $200 in September, for which Apple was quite widely attacked because the sudden drop in price was believed to be unfair. Apple iPhone’s initial popularity was not close to the level Apple had anticipated it would be.

Apple anticipated the first weekend sales to come in around 200,000 to 700,000 devices sold to the public. But just roughly around 145,000 activations were registered for the first weekend.

One downfall was that the applications offered on the Apple iPhone, could only be activated buy getting a two year subscription with AT&T, which was a restriction many people did not appreciate. Catching the attention of the media was the story of a 300 page bill someone received from AT&T, since then changes have been made in their invoice statements.

The Apple iPhone went international during the fourth quarter of 2007 and began to sell their iPhone’s in Germany, France, Europe and the United Kingdom. The international release went well, except for in Europe because Apple decided to only allow one company to sell the iPhone and that seem to be a potential legal issue.

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