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They were the first device with a big display and a first-class web browser. That created the smartphone market you now take for granted but was completely revo

by acdha 2y ago

They were the first device with a big display and a first-class web browser. That created the smartphone market you now take for granted but was completely revolutionary at the time when most devices had tiny screens and half their physical size was a keyboard. The other big thing is more subtle: the iPhone was the first major break in the carriers’ value-extraction model. It was common that you’d get phones with half the storage used by promo apps the carrier wouldn’t let you uninstall, and the carrier app stores were both limited and unbelievably expensive. We had multiple clients who were interested in mobile apps but the cost of being in the stores was like $50k per carrier plus half of the proceeds, and that was an improvement over the time Qualcomm demanded to see the balance sheet so they could decide what percentage of their TOTAL revenue was fair – we asked and they confirmed that they expected a cut of every sale, even ones which never involved the mobile app. The energy at WWDC08 was incredible because the app stores were both terms were so much better than anyone had gotten before, and you only had to do it once. I still think it should be better now but it used to be so much worse.

int_19h 2y ago
There were high-end WinCE and Symbian devices with large displays and no physical keyboards (or sliders where keyboard doesn't encroach on screen size). To remind, first-gen iPhone was 3.5" @ 320x480 in 2007; for comparison, Dell Axim was 3.7" @ 480x640 in 2005, and by 2007 there were some WinMo handhelds with 480x800. The thing that really made iPhone different was capacitive touchscreen, and the OS designed around that. WinMo pretty much required the stylus for many things.
- eru 2y ago
  Yes, the iPhone was nicer to use than what was available in the market the day before it launched. But the iPhone did _not_ have any first mover advantage. If anything, Apple was late to the party.
- acdha 2y ago
  Also note “and a first-class web browser” in my compound statement. If you used devices of that era, the browsers sucked at handling most of the web. I knew people who had the previous generation devices (I’m excluding the PalmOS ones I owned since they required a stylus) but nobody used the mobile browser much because it was so unrewarding, and everyone I know replaced them with iPhones due to the web experience.
  - int_19h 2y ago
    In 2007, the lack of Flash support alone would disqualify it from being "first class" IMO.
    - acdha 2y ago
      Opinions varied widely on that - the Flash experience on mobile was horrible enough that it works equally well as an argument that “the web” and Flash were substantially not the same.
      - int_19h 2y ago
        It was definitely horrible, but given how pervasive Flash was on the web then, I think a more reasonable takeaway is to say that no mobile device had first-class browser support until HTML5 <video> became prevalent. To me, "first class" implies "I can visit any popular website and expect it to work", which was decidedly not the case for iPhone at introduction.
eru 2y ago
Everything you say might be true, but I wouldn't necessarily call that first mover advantage. > [...] when most devices had tiny screens and half their physical size was a keyboard. Ie Apple introduced a new, arguably better, entrant into an existing market, and managed to grow that market. But I can see your argument that you can re-interpret being that first to really commit to a big touch-screen only and (almost) no buttons to be a 'first move'. (Though a different comment mentioned that Apple wasn't the first here either?) The iPhone was definitely a successful device!
- acdha 2y ago
  Also note the part after “and” - I wrote that as a compound sentence because I saw more people than I expected go from both earlier smartphones or PDAs because the iPhone gave them the web in a way that earlier devices just didn’t. None of my clients had seen much in the way of public mobile web (or WAP) adoption prior to that, but that changed surprisingly quickly when the iPhone launched.
  - eru 2y ago
    Yes. Out of curiosity, what do you mean by your clients?
    - acdha 2y ago
      I worked with a number of organizations which built public web apps. Nobody really asked about support for mobile browsers before the iPhone - some people checked that, say, an order form was technically functional but the assumption was that if it was slow or hard to read that was more to be expected than something they were going to pay to improve.

by acdha 2y ago

int_19h 2y ago

There were high-end WinCE and Symbian devices with large displays and no physical keyboards (or sliders where keyboard doesn't encroach on screen size). To remind, first-gen iPhone was 3.5" @ 320x480 in 2007; for comparison, Dell Axim was 3.7" @ 480x640 in 2005, and by 2007 there were some WinMo handhelds with 480x800. The thing that really made iPhone different was capacitive touchscreen, and the OS designed around that. WinMo pretty much required the stylus for many things.

eru 2y ago
Yes, the iPhone was nicer to use than what was available in the market the day before it launched. But the iPhone did _not_ have any first mover advantage. If anything, Apple was late to the party.
acdha 2y ago
Also note “and a first-class web browser” in my compound statement. If you used devices of that era, the browsers sucked at handling most of the web. I knew people who had the previous generation devices (I’m excluding the PalmOS ones I owned since they required a stylus) but nobody used the mobile browser much because it was so unrewarding, and everyone I know replaced them with iPhones due to the web experience.
- int_19h 2y ago
  In 2007, the lack of Flash support alone would disqualify it from being "first class" IMO.
  - acdha 2y ago
    Opinions varied widely on that - the Flash experience on mobile was horrible enough that it works equally well as an argument that “the web” and Flash were substantially not the same.
    - int_19h 2y ago
      It was definitely horrible, but given how pervasive Flash was on the web then, I think a more reasonable takeaway is to say that no mobile device had first-class browser support until HTML5 <video> became prevalent. To me, "first class" implies "I can visit any popular website and expect it to work", which was decidedly not the case for iPhone at introduction.

eru 2y ago

Everything you say might be true, but I wouldn't necessarily call that first mover advantage. > [...] when most devices had tiny screens and half their physical size was a keyboard. Ie Apple introduced a new, arguably better, entrant into an existing market, and managed to grow that market. But I can see your argument that you can re-interpret being that first to really commit to a big touch-screen only and (almost) no buttons to be a 'first move'. (Though a different comment mentioned that Apple wasn't the first here either?) The iPhone was definitely a successful device!

acdha 2y ago
Also note the part after “and” - I wrote that as a compound sentence because I saw more people than I expected go from both earlier smartphones or PDAs because the iPhone gave them the web in a way that earlier devices just didn’t. None of my clients had seen much in the way of public mobile web (or WAP) adoption prior to that, but that changed surprisingly quickly when the iPhone launched.
- eru 2y ago
  Yes. Out of curiosity, what do you mean by your clients?
  - acdha 2y ago
    I worked with a number of organizations which built public web apps. Nobody really asked about support for mobile browsers before the iPhone - some people checked that, say, an order form was technically functional but the assumption was that if it was slow or hard to read that was more to be expected than something they were going to pay to improve.