On a day like yesterday, sixteen years ago, the brilliant Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone 1, a device that completely revolutionized the telecommunications industry. It also transformed a large segment of computing by ushering in the age of mobility and discovering a gold mine in the process that Apple exploited like no other vendor.

After taking the music industry by storm with the iPod, Apple began developing its next big thing. After months of rumors and amid huge anticipation, Steve Jobs publicly announced the first iPhone January 9, 2007 at the Macworld Conference & Expo keynote.

The terminal had a 3.5-inch multi-touch display that covered the entire front of the terminal, leaving behind the classic keyboards used at that time. It was a design that inspired hundreds of later models and has survived to this day. The first generation iPhone was quad-band GSM with EDGE technology and also had wireless Wi-Fi connectivity. In its early days, it was marketed under an exclusive launch in the United States through the operator AT&T. A strategy that soon fell out of favor with specific exceptions in some markets.

Another highlight was the use of a new operating system called iPhone OS, later renamed iOS and is also used in the company’s other mobile devices. Its interface was based on the concept of direct manipulation with sliders, switches and buttons that worked smoothly with multi-touch gestures.

iPhone 1 and a gold mine for Apple

Time magazine named it the invention of the year the success of the iPhone was absolute and the impact of its full launch for the tech industry on several fronts, including its competitors. In fact, the arrival of the first Android phones had to be delayed because “the first iPhone was light years away from its development in 2007”, as recognized by its creators. On the other hand, it put on the ropes large manufacturers such as Nokia, Motorola or BlackBerry, who until then dominated the market and could not keep up with Apple when introducing new iPhones that followed in the following years.

The iPhone is considered to be the most profitable electronic product in history. It inspired the arrival of hundreds of models from other manufacturers and opened up the smartphone market. turned Apple into “mobile company” given the importance it had on its bottom line, but also the most valuable company on the planet, with amazing capitalization values ​​and unattainable benefits for the rest.

The App Store undoubtedly helped with this. Although the first iPhone did not have support for installing more applications than those installed and Steve Jobs himself didn’t want third-party software on his terminalmonths after the launch, he announced a development kit that was a prelude to the launch of the official application store, which greatly increased the capabilities of the terminal and, in addition to selling hardware, opened up another source of business of colossal proportions for Apple.

Its growth in the number of applications and revenue was staggering as Apple grew its customer base. Today, the App Store is the star of Apple’s increasingly powerful services division, with revenue and profits that alone exceed those of many major tech companies. If it could serve as a mere accessory for the iPhone in its early days, today is almost more important than them, essential to its operation and feedback on its sales. And all this from the iPhone 1, whose anniversary we are commemorating. We leave you with the Macworld 2007 keynote where it all started.