Apple iPhone turns 10 this week and the company has sold more than 1 billion iPhones since June 29, 2007.
The iPhone concept – casually introduced by CEO Steve (“Oh, I nearly forgot, one more thing …”) Jobs at a 2007 Apple event in San Francisco, attended by CDN editor David Frith – caught some of Apple’s suppliers on the hop.
“We still have the voicemail from Steve Jobs when he called the CEO and founder here,” said David Bairstow at Skyhook, the company that supplied location technology to early iPhones. “He thought he was being pranked by someone in the office and it took him two days to call Steve Jobs back.”
The iPhone came with an extra twist in 2008 when Apple introduced the App Store, letting software developers offer mobile applications, with Apple taking a cut of their revenue.
A decade on, services revenue is a crucial area of growth for Apple, bringing in $24.3 billion in revenue last year, while more than two billion people worldwide now have smartphones.