What Experts Said About Original iPhone - Digg has dug through archives and picked highlights

Some said it will die, other said it will perform miracles. The original iPhone was launched just over 8 years ago. What did the experts back then say about this new Apple device. Remember, it wasn't a smartphone, most people were not surfing the internet on phones, it was Apple's 'Musicphone' as the response to Sony's Walkman phones and the like, as a brother to the iPod music player. What did people write when Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007? Digg has a great overview of the scope of the opinions. And kindly they included my 'Jesusphone' blog, ie the one where I said we will measure mobile phone industry in two times, the time Bi, Before iPhone, and the time Ai After iPhone, similar to how Western calendar is divided in time before and after the birth of Jesus Christ.

It was one of my most perfect blog postings. Note, I wrote it before the first iPhone unit was sold, before anyone other than Apple people had even touched an iPhone. Absolutely everything in it came true, from the IT industry to the advertising industry; even to such bizarre obscure and mostly ignored points such as, that Nokia N-Series will sell more than iPhone and yet that nobody will care because all will be mesmerized by the shiny new iPhone... Yeah, that was an epic blog I wrote in 2007. Still worth reading today haha. Thanks Digg for including CDB blog on the survey of what people said about the iPhone and while I never used the term 'Jesusphone' in the blog, it was a mistaken reference to my blog that created that term (because I did talk about the Christian calendar BC/AD ie Bi and Ai), so inadvertently, I am the father of the term Jesusphone too :-)

Postscript - how could I be so perfect in that prediction in 2007 before anyone had even played with iPhones? Nobody can be that clever, that intelligent, that smart, that foresightful (on the spot). And neither was I. It does come to Roman philosopher Seneca's famous idiom: Luck is what happens when Preparation meets Opportunity. I was incredibly prepared for the Apple phone. So the iPhone came out in June 2007. I was at Nokia HQ back in 2001 (before I left to start my own consultancy in October) when we did our annual internal global strategy review round among the various department bosses at HQ. Me being in charge of Nokia's consulting and the massive global consumer end-user research of mobile phones and mobile services, of course I was involved (being one of the most junior of execs in that process, haha). But yes, back in 2001, six years before Apple launched its first mobile phone, Nokia had in its internal strategy round identified which non-mobile company was the biggest threat to Nokia. Apple. Note that Apple had just released its iPod and there was not even the Motorola-Rokr collaboration project on the horizon at this time. Yet Nokia HQ could see very clearly that Apple would enter the handset industry at some point in the future, and become a bigger threat to Nokia long-term than Motorola or SonyEricsson or Samsung etc. Why was this? Because Apple was the master of the best user experience. And if you can remember back to mobile phones back in 2001, Nokia was THE best, easiest-to-use handset at that time. It was our competitive advantage. Nokia's were the easiest to use. And we knew then, in 2001, that if and when Apple entered the handset market, they would steal this one advantage from Nokia instantly. That of course, an Apple mobile phone would become instantly the best at usability, just like how Macs were easiest-to-use PCs and iPods the best musicplayers.

So, first level of prep. I had been involved in the internal debates at Nokia six years before the iPhone, about what Apple would be in mobile phones. That gives you plenty of time to think and digest.

Second was this blog and the iPod debate. Those who've been here for ten years reading CDB will remember how incredibly heated the arguments became when I (correctly) called the timing of the peak of iPod musicplayer sales one year before that peak came. I was crucified on this blog by the Apple fanatics. Yet years later, we found out not only obviously that my forecast had been 100% correct, but even that Apple itself had monitored the EXACT same trend at EXACTLY the same time and started to develop its 'musicphone' response to the end of iPod dominance of pocketable music players, because the Sony Walkman and other musicphones by phone makers now would outsell stand-alone music players like the iPod. I am a numbers-driven guy as you all know. When I saw the numbers, I reported them. Then came the firestorm. But part of the firestorm was also the repeated arguments from every conveivable side, for and against the iPod. for and against Apple, for and against the Mac, and yes, fore and against an 'iPod phone' ie iPhone. We rehearsed many of the iPhone arguments on this blog in 2006 in almost endless debates. That was very good prep for me, for when the iPhone then came. My views had become crystal clear.

Then was the 3G Mobile Forum in Tokyo. In late 2006 the biggest telecoms event of Japan which had me often speaking, invited me again to present at their next event held in late January 2007, but the organizers asked me to take on a topic for which they could not find a speaker. They wanted me to speak on handset user interface design. How often do you see me talking of handset UI here on this blog haha, it is CLEARLY not my core competence, but if that was what they needed, I said I know some good people who can help me and I'll do the best I can. It was on day 3 of a 3 day conference, I was expecting a modest turnout on a boring topic. And I had prepared a good presentation with the help of my friends at Fjord for example. And then, two weeks before I was set to speak, Steve Jobs has his iPhone moment on stage 'one more thing' and suddenly the iPhone - and user experience - is the hottest thing in mobile. And at Japan's biggest telecoms event, multiple-bestselling mobile author Tomi Ahonen will talk about the brand new iPhone!!!

My topic was handset UI design, not the iPhone. But of course everybody knew I had to talk about the just-announced iPhone (without anyone having yet seen it more than the pictures and Steve Jobs's promo presentation). So now, taking all the history of 6 years of thinking about Apple and mobile, and adding what Jobs showed about the iPhone, I had to add about 5 minutes of iPhone 'insights' to my Tokyo presentation. And of course I seeked the guidance of all my most trusted friends, to make sure I was not going to make a fool or myself on stage in Tokyo.

But that was JANUARY of 2007. I gave a presentation of what the iPhone will be and how it will change (or not) the world. That was still five months before my famous Jesusphone blog. So then I had more months to think and digest and debate and plot and prepare. So when it was time to write that blog, very likely, apart from people inside Apple, I was probably the most deeply knowledgable expert about the iPhone. Like Seneca said, Luck is what happens when Preparation meets Opportunity. That blog had been six years in the making, with two very significant refinements along the way, with this blog and my readers here playing a significant part in helping me refine my message. That is how you become lucky. You need to be prepared. As Finnish boyscouts say: Ole valmis: Aina valmiina! (Be prepared, always prepared). And if you want to marvel at how perfectly one blog can predict eight years of the future of the most volatile industry in human history, re-read my iPhone blog of May 2007.

Comments

[abdul muis]

@Tomi, You're the man.

I'm looking forward for your article on (is it good/bad) subject of Apple financing. And should samsung follow that road.

[abdul muis]

(and PS: you were wrong about Sony. Sony just launch the Z5. Thus, sony is NOT on 1 year cycle, but STILL on 6 month cycle)

[Paul]

@Tomi

You got it very well!

Now I guess he question is will Apple be able to do it again now that Jobs is not here? Will Apple be able to break into new markets (e.g. TVs, cars)? Apple already kind of failed with iWatch (under Cook's supervision). I can see how Apple might improve best user experience for TVs and it might even succeed on long term but I find it challenging to see how Apple can do it for cars.

[abdul muis]

@Baron95

"It is very simple. Ask the average person on the street who invented the smartphone, and the vast majority will say Apple.

What came before was irrelevant."

WOW.... Another Astroturfer mind bending word after being disciplined by Tomi????

America is NOT the universe.... If you ask American (2.8% world population) who were lack of knowledge/information (not all were ignorant or lack of information) he might say APPLE. But ask the same to the rest of the world, and you will be educated!!

[abdul muis]

@Paul

Seeing that Apple lack of quality (bad iOS update under Cook), and lack of imagination / bold design change by the design team (Johny Ive and friend) I think Apple time already passed.

[Winter]

"It is very simple. Ask the average person on the street who invented the smartphone, and the vast majority will say Apple. What came before was irrelevant."

Ask the average person what OS he uses, and he will say Word.Ask him who invented the PC, and he will will say Bill Gates. Some even think Bill Gates invented the computer.

The average person in a (US) street might not even know where Australia lies on a map:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0TK_vk-XDM

2:20 minutes.

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi abdul, Paul Winter

abdul - thanks. On the Apple corporation financial situation haha, that won't happen. But I think you meant the new purchase payment option, to do the contract with Apple instead of the operator/carrier. Yes, that is a big step by Apple and it is rubbing the carriers/operators very badly and when we combine it with the virtual SIM card, it all speaks of Apple's enormous hunger to try to circumvent the operators/carriers and disintermediate them while grabbing those profits in the basic cellular telecoms business without buying expensive cellular licences or building enormously expensive cellular networks.. I am monitoring that space and will be writing about it yes.

On Sony flagship Xperia launch cycle. Yes, it has now reverted back to the 6 month cycle while Sony promised for a while they were quitting that and going to a 12 month cycle. I can only report what is in the news. I did say at the time that a 6 month cycle was more competitive and allowed Sony more maneuvrability to react to market changes and customer demand, that going to 12 months was not a good move by Sony while it would save them some money. As Sony's market share has fallen, I think Sony came to the same conclusion, hence they went back to the 6 month cycle.

Paul - (thanks) yeah, it is the big question about Apple. Is there a life after Steve Jobs. Can Apple continue to reinvent industries and find 'new market spaces' like we wrote in the book Communities Dominate Brands when we did our case study about the iPod and iTunes. Music industry was seen as a stagnant industry past its prime, yet Apple reinvented it (with Steve Jobs). The thing is, there was - now obvious with hind sight - a big problem with the music consumer experience of the 1990s and the tech as used back then, ie you could only fit a dozen or two dozen songs onto a cassette or CD Rom etc and thus taking along 'all your music' was not feasible with the technologies then in use. Apple was very smart to notice they can reinvent the music experience by using new tech - Apple WAS the first PC maker to put a CD Rom reader onto a desktop computer, they had been studying this mass storage world for quite a while. Still it was a big gamble. And it worked out.

What is wrong with the wristwatch situation, is that there is no 'inherent problem' with telling time on the wrist. A battery-operated modern digital watch will keep perfect time for a year, the wrist-appearance is well accepted and if you just want to see the time, doing it now on an Apple Watch or any other smart watch is no better. No inherent gain. But compare to the time-keeping on the mobile phone. There we get tons of benefits a normal 'dumb watch' on the wrist can't match, starting from calendar, touch-screen, multiple alarms, and going to network-time ie if you travel across time zones, the smartphone can update correct local time as you land, etc. The smartphone can do BETTER time-keeping than the traditional wristwatch. THEN you get the contest not on can we make the wrist-device smarter (obviously it can be done) but can it be as good as the phablet in our pocket. Here is where the smartwatch utterly loses the battle. It was a losing proposition, and I am certain Steve Jobs would never have allowed the Apple Watch out to the market if he was alive, because it was not good enough, it did not change the world, and thus it was not 'Apple-ish' enough. It was not a Mac or iPod or iTunes or iPhone or iPad. It was just another smart watch that never would change the world. It was a bad step by Apple that brings it back to being closer to 'just another tech company'.

I say the next Apple iProduct is now the key. The next thing HAS to change the world in a similar way to how the iPhone changed mobile phones or the Mac changed PCs. It can't be just another digital TV play or another electrical car or whatnot. It has to be 'Apple'. And I think that both the TV and car experience are not in such a stage that Apple could achieve that 'Macintosh moment' with those industries. Tesla yes, I think Tesla has now done enough to electric cars to be seen as the revolution for the car industry (and helped now with the Volkswagen diesel crisis). Is there 'space' to be revolutionary in that space now? I don't think so. What of TV? That is all about the content, and the cable TV industry is in all sorts of trouble. Can Apple revolutionize that? Again, I am very skeptical because of all the free content that exists online and then the 400-channel cable/satellite systems that try to compete with those. Its not at all like the music industry was in the 1990s when we really were constrained in what music could be listened to at any one point, not just portable but also at home (play one album, or one CD, or one cassette at a time).

I wrote on this blog that the camera industry is ripe for an Apple revolution. Here the strengths of Apple fit perfectly, the cellular industry/mobile gains are enormous compared to stand-alone camera use, and the legacy players are all struggling in the onslaught of cheap cameraphones. A premium Apple camera play into premium but not quite professional cameras (with iPhone-fully-integrated) would seem like a great opportunity to skim tons of profits and see the future and do an Apple play to that industry.

Money, payments is another that is very broken in terms of cumbersome systems that don't talk to each other and are either very technically old or then modern but incompatible. Here Apple has the problem it doesn't have the scale. This sits as the natural domain for Google and arguably also for Samsung, rather than Apple. And Apple has already started its play here, obviously so its no more 'new thing' for Apple to do.

Not every industry is now in a 'music player' situation. For the truly 'Apple-ish' revolution like the Mac, like iPod, like the iPhone, we need an industry in that kind of crisis (PCs without a mouse, trying to do it all with the keyboard, music players with cassettes and CD Roms, smartphones trying to do it all with the tiny keypad and dozens of little buttons rather than touch screen). There probably are such industries but I can't think of others than cameras. Cars and TVs are not in that category and clearly neither was the wristwatch industry.

Winter and abdul - haha yeah, the average person even globally is pretty ignorant and Americans unfortunately nowadays even more so. But we try to keep the truth alive here on this blog haha. And if you don't study the past, you are condemned to repeat the mistakes of the past.. (says Tomi the wannabe History professor)

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[abdul muis]

@Tomi

Yes, I mean that. And should samsung follow apple on that one? I heard that samsung also preparing to offer the same financing.

[Lullz]

The next big question is if Apple is going to be closer to 10% or 20% market share in 2020. My opinion is that iOS will be closer to 20% market share of smartphones sold. I'm also estimating that perhaps 85-90% of the phones sold will be smartphones by 2020. This is because today it looks like the growth of the smartphone sales are slowing down and people seem to have some uses for dumphones. Some even prefer dumphones by default since there are too few smartphones with keyboards.

[Winter]

@Lullz
"This is because today it looks like the growth of the smartphone sales are slowing down and people seem to have some uses for dumphones."

By 2020, any "dumbphones" sold will be simple smartphones. At some point, it will be uneconomical to keep alive a production line for dumbphones. People who only need/want a dumbphone will have to buy a cheap, bare bones smartphone.

@Lullz
"The next big question is if Apple is going to be closer to 10% or 20% market share in 2020. My opinion is that iOS will be closer to 20% market share of smartphones sold. "

How many smartphones do you think will be sold in 2020? I would guess that in 2020, 7B humans will have a smartphone and around 2 billion smartphones will be sold. 20% of sales would mean around 20% of installed base. 20 % of 7 billion smartphones means an installed base of 1.4B iPhones.

But Apple does not price their phones to be reachable by 20% of humanity. They price the iPhone as a luxury article being affordable by ~5% of humanity. So, unless Apple drop their prices dramatically, they will end up at far below 10% of market share.

[Lullz]

@abdul muis

It's a very hard question about who invented what. Can you answer few of these? I really would like to hear your answers.

Who invented the first home computer with a general purpose 8 bit cpu?

Who invented the first 16 bit consumer oriented computer?

Who invented the first 32 bit game console?

Who invented the first 64 bit smartphone?

All these innovations were needed for the latest and greatest mobile phones since they pretty much have all that tech inside. Despite that very few people know or even agree about the answers for those questions.

[Winter]

@Lullz
"It's a very hard question about who invented what."

The questions are wrong. Because there is an inherent ambiguity in your use of "Invented". Do you mean "Designed" or "Build"?

It is clear there were people who invented the semiconductor transistor and the integrated circuit. But the first "home computer" was not invented, it was build based on concepts that had been floating around for years. There were "inventions" involved in making it a real product. But the concepts of a home computer or mobile communicator were already depicted in old stories like Star Trek.

Likewise, a 64 bit smartphone had not to be invented after there was a 32 bit smartphone. People were just waiting for the right components to become economical. The idea of a 64 bit smartphone and how you would need to build it were written down long before these components were available. And there is no single person or company that can be pointed out as having "invented" the 64 bit smartphone.

[Lullz]

@Winter

"By 2020, any "dumbphones" sold will be simple smartphones. At some point, it will be uneconomical to keep alive a production line for dumbphones. People who only need/want a dumbphone will have to buy a cheap, bare bones smartphone."

I'm aware of this forecast and it may happen like that. However I disagree about this and suggest that there will be dumphones left in 2020 for some purposes. The production cost shouldn't be a problem since today it's incredibly cheap to produce even small batches of products and since the dumphones are alredy designed, the small changes they will need will be also quite cheap to design. We need to wait for few years to see what will actually happen. No forecast is destined to happen no matter how good it is, don't you agree about that?

"How many smartphones do you think will be sold in 2020?"

I would go with 2B or possibly even less if the trend continues and smartphones will have a longer life with second hand users. Also notice that I said Apple would be closer to 20% than to 10%. This means I'm betting for more than 15% and even 15.1% would do that. This means Apple would need to sell 300 million or more phones. I have given my estimations for iPhone sales earlier this year and I'm not changing that. However I'm simply saying that 250 million phones for 2015 might be doable. That would leave Apple with more than 16% market share for 2015. I don't see why that should change since iPhones are probably becoming at least slightly cheaper in the low end and the world population is getting wealthier.

"But Apple does not price their phones to be reachable by 20% of humanity."

Assuming that Apple sold less than 50% of the phones in the price category for the cheapest iPhone to the most expensive one in 2014, I would say that 400 million phones were purchased in that category. Also not that 20% of the population is not needed for 20% market share since not everyone buys a new phone every year. Actually about only one phone for 3 persons were sold in 2014. If there were 2B smartphone buyers in 2020 it would take less than 6% of the population to get a 20% market share and little more than 4% for getting more than 15% market share.

[Paul]

@Tommi

That's the longest reply I have ever gotten from you!

I agree with you that iWatch would have never been launched as a product under Jobs for the obvious reasons which you have stated.

Regarding camera and phones, I didn't mention it on purpose (maybe Apple reads it and gets ideas hahaha) but I agree with you.

In TV/cable industry Apple might be able to twist some hands and push forward using brute force its way thru but I do not see how this would work in money-payments area. I am also skeptical regarding Apple succeeding in TV area but I think that the probability of succeeding is higher than in money payment area.

[Lullz]

@Winter

Impressing. You actually got my point. Inventing something is not that easy as it sounds like. Or actually defining who invented what.

I have no problem giving Nokia credit for inventing the smartphone. That however was also based on some concepts and earlier designs. Some people even dare to say that IBM Simon was the first smartphone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Simon

"The Simon Personal Communicator was the first cellular phone to include telephone and PDA features in one device."

It was even possible to load applications on that phone. Some are saying it was a phone like iPhone 3G was in 2008 because there is a touch screen.

So, what's your opinion about who invented the smartphone?

[Lullz]

@Paul

"I agree with you that iWatch would have never been launched as a product under Jobs for the obvious reasons which you have stated."

Jobs did launch some ill-fated products like the original Apple TV and Ping. Those were not that great success stories but they were valuable lessons for Apple. The first one actually has evolved into the latest Apple TV we will see in few months. The watch is a new product category and I see how there is some need for a product like that. There are occasions where taking the phone out of the pocket is not that acceptable but quickly looking at your watch just might be. That's a niche but as long as it's a profitable one, I see no problem going there. It definitely seems to be profitable for Apple.

"I am also skeptical regarding Apple succeeding in TV area but I think that the probability of succeeding is higher than in money payment area."

Apps on Apple TV might be huge. People like to play some games on the big screen where everyone can see it without holding a device. This won't be as huge as iPhone but most likely a very profitable venture for Apple. I'm not going to talk more about the profits because that's out of the scope of this blog. Apple may also learn from the new Apple TV since there may be some interesting synergies with the iPhone and with the watch.

[Paul]

@Lulz

> Jobs did launch some ill-fated products like the original Apple TV and Ping.

Yes, he did that BUT still Jobs would have not launched a product like iWatch.

> Those were not that great success stories but they were valuable lessons for Apple.
> The first one actually has evolved into the latest Apple TV we will see in few months.

> The watch is a new product category and I see how there is some need for a product
> like that. There are occasions where taking the phone out of the pocket is not
> that acceptable but quickly looking at your watch just might be. That's a niche

That is super-slim niche! Still Jobs would have not done it!

> but as long as it's a profitable one, I see no problem going there. It definitely seems to be profitable for Apple.

Also selling bread loafs and flowers would be profitable for Apple but Apple does not do those because is below the threshold of profitability which Apple has set for itself(20%?) and Apple cannot improve the user experience for those. I really do not see how the iWatch improves the user experience for someone who already has an iPhone (maybe I am thick but still for both I need to raise my hand to look at them and push something).

[Winter]

@Lullz
"I'm aware of this forecast and it may happen like that. However I disagree about this and suggest that there will be dumphones left in 2020 for some purposes. The production cost shouldn't be a problem since today it's incredibly cheap to produce even small batches of products and since the dumphones are alredy designed, the small changes they will need will be also quite cheap to design."

The problem is in the chips, e.g., the CPU and hardware controllers. By 2020, it might be cheaper to use a 2019 64 bit ARM SoC than to go for some obsolete 2010 processor design. Most likely, it will be cheaper to use OTS prints and parts to make a cheap smartphone than to try to re-create a dumbphone.

[Lullz]

@Winter

Are you going to define a smartphone with some kind of hardware based definition or what are you saying? Is it possible to turn a dumphone or a feature phone into a smartphone?

What's your opinion on this one. Does a 2007 iPhone with iOS 2.x qualify as a smartphone? Do you consider the original iPhone with iPhone OS 1.x a smartphone? Tomi says it's not one.

[Paul]

@Lulz

> Apps on Apple TV might be huge.

There have been apps on Apple TV for a very long time. For example, YouTube on Apple TV is an app.
Also, ChromeCast has had apps for years. Therefore Apple is really late in this area and it is more of a reaction to the competition than anything else.