In January 2007, I was on a trip visiting family in rural North Carolina during the week of Macworld Expo. When I got back to my aunt’s house after a day of visiting folks, I waited as her sloooooow Internet connection loaded apple.com.
What I saw blew my mind. The iPhone had been rumored, but seeing those original web pages was really something.
Here’s what that site said:
iPhone combines three products — a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and a breakthrough Internet communications device with desktop-class email, web browsing, maps, and searching — into one small and lightweight handheld device. iPhone also introduces an entirely new user interface based on a large multi-touch display and pioneering new software, letting you control everything with just your fingers. So it ushers in an era of software power and sophistication never before seen in a mobile device, completely redefining what you can do on a mobile phone.
Six months after that family vacation, I was back at work for the iPhone’s introductory launch, which I wrote about back in 2013. It was a day that I’ll always remember.
I never would have guessed back then that the iPhone would become the absolute sensation it has become. Just today, Apple announced that it has sold three billion of them, as reported by Amanda Silberling:
Apple has sold 3 billion iPhones since the product was launched in 2007, Apple CEO Tim Cook said Thursday during the company’s third-quarter earnings call.
It took Apple nine years to sell the billionth iPhone, a milestone the company reached in 2016. This implies that Apple sold 2 billion between 2016 and now — also a nine-year period — marking the product’s growing popularity.
What an amazing 18 years.