10 Years of iPhone: From The Fall Of Apple To Becoming A Global Market Leader
“I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance….
Unless you have a lot of passion about this, you’re not going to survive. You’re going to give it up.
So you’ve got to have an idea, or a problem or a wrong that you want to right that you’re passionate about; otherwise, you’re not going to have the perseverance to stick it through.”
- Steve Jobs
(Pre-iPhone: Conception) • Getting Married For A Second Time
It’s 1997, Apple was almost ready to go bankrupt. Lack of innovation and product stagnation for almost a decade created a goulash of internal problems.
There was only one man who could save the company. The man who birthed the inception of Apple. His name is Steve Jobs.
He took a simple product idea (The Mobile Phone) and sparked a new flame into a global brand people once loved but forgot about.
He designed culture as if it were ceramic being molded on a pottery wheel. The level of focus he brought to Apple during this time was razor-sharp that the sheer attention to detail created tension so tight, only he could be the one to break it.
It took 9 years (1997 to 2006) for the iPhone to incubate inside the womb of Apple before Steve Jobs was able to delivery his Golden Child. From falling in love with Apple, experiencing a nasty public divorce with his beloved company, to getting remarried to his soulmate. The relationship with his first true love has always been rocky from the start.
“The Course Of True Love Never Did Run Smooth” — Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night’s Dream
His time away rekindled the fire that was once an everlasting flame. Companies are like relationships, CEO’s experience ups and downs that leave you feeling awesome one minute then other times you want to run the other way. Love is blind and running a company requires a crazy amount of trust that everything will work out.
(1st iPhone: Product Birth) • The Birth of iPhone
Rumors began to swirl that Steve Jobs was expecting to birth an idea that could possibly change the world. He denied it multiple times during The All Things Digital Conference. He later told to what happened.
After multiple years of rumors and speculation, he finally told the world. It was announced on January, 9th 2007. This is the day that mobile computing forever changed.
“This is only the beginning. Apple reinvented the phone.” — Apple 1st Generation iPhone Slogan
The iPhone had some initially worrisome complications at birth. Connection speed was a huge issue and it lacked features that came standard with other phones at the time.
Despite all the unexpected problems, the iPhone came out to be a beautiful display of hardware and software.
(iPhone 3G: Product Infancy) • Trying To Shed The Baby Fat
The iPhone 3G still had it’s baby fat. When a see a picture of it, I’m reminded of a baby picture you don’t want to look at. Where my cheeks really that big? Yes, you didn’t always have that perfect jawline. It took time to develop.
The iPhone gave us a sense of optimism about our future. The excitement we felt at birth was overwhelming. We knew it was just the beginning of a revolution and the hope it brought us compelled consumers to purchase one and join the journey.
(iPhone 4s: Early ProductHood) • The iPhone Learned To Talk With Siri
The introduction of the iPhone 4s was the first time Siri was introduced. The iPhone finally learned to talk! It was a huge breakthrough in the design of the product.
The iPhone 4s Siri Commercials are still forever engrained into my head with the background music that bring a true sense of product nostalgia.
A product that we used to love to hold, can now talk back to us. You couldn’t have a full conversation with Siri and most of time was spent with you getting annoyed because you couldn’t understand.
(iPhone 5s: Middle ProductHood) • Product Growing Pains
The iPhone hit it’s first real growth spurt. It was the first time you started noticing changes about the product. The exciting kind of changes, the ones where you know that product is starting to grow up and mature into a respectable young consumer electronics product.
The screen size got bigger and it finally slimed down. The processor was upgraded inside to an A6 chip and the iPhone started to get snappy. The animations became smooth and crisp. More memory allowed applications to become more dynamic.
(iPhone 6: Late ProductHood) • Becoming Apart Of Culture
More changes began to shape how the product looked. The 4.7 inch screen was a shock to most. It got big so fast, people weren’t expecting it. They didn’t realize the product was maturing and adapting the the market.
The faster processor birthed higher quality experiences. The upgraded cameras gave users a new perspective on life and how much they were able to document lives without a real physical camera.
Communication during this stage vastly improved with the addition of LTE and faster WIFI connectivity. The iPhone began to have a true sense of clarity when you called someone. With product growth, problems began to arise.
The iPhone began to get sick and have problems like “Touch-Disease”. What seemed like a product that’s will always be healthy, now began to have internal problems. The product began to slowly get better and overtime it healed itself back into a healthy product.
(iPhone 7 Plus & Beyond: Adolescent) • Big Changes Coming!
The current generation of iPhone feels rather awkward. Not much has changed over the last few years. It’s getting much faster, a lot more polished and refined but true technological improvements haven’t emerged yet.
I believe the next generation (iPhone 8 or so we predict it’s called) will have the most profound changes we have ever seen.
The product will begin to reach full maturity (VR Capabilities) and if you haven’t seen an iPhone in the last few then when your family member sees you holding the new one at Christmas, they will say “Wow, the iPhone looks so different”.
The iPhone represents the cycle of life.
Enjoy eating your Apple.
