Comment by asdff
4 years ago
People were still doing iPhone stuff before the iPhone. You had blackberry and palm offering email, internet, games, and mms to the masses and the devices were quite popular for those who could afford them.
The iPhone only became a device for the masses, truly, when carriers started subsidizing the older models for zero down, around the iPhone 4g era. This has continued today where Verizon currently offers the iPhone SE for "$0/mo" like some cheap flip phone of old. Before that, the iPhone was exclusively rich persons phone, and probably still would have been in the U.S. at least (like it is in the rest of the world) had it not been for carrier subsidies and cheaper mobile internet plans (or maybe just the normalization of spending so much on a mobile plan every month). The iPhone didn't even get third party apps until years after launch, and when it did, the most popular of that sweet sweet software during those early days were mostly dumb stuff like apps that make gunshot sounds, or flash game clones. The real gems during that era was software written by the jailbreak community, and a lot of that added functionality was cloned by apple in later OS versions.
quite popular for those who could afford them
Lots of revisionist history here.
Until the iPhone 3G, vast majority of people I knew here in Sydney had Nokias. Getting data was also expensive.
Apple changed all of that here. Affordable plans with data to make a smart phones useful. Then they were everywhere. So it wasn’t a “rich persons” phone here in Australia. Maybe a middle class phone. They also got software updates for years, letting you keep the device longer. Once Android got their act together, I remember all the Android users churning through phones at least once a year because they were so bad.
The iPhone was first launched in Jan 2007. The App Store launched July 2008. So it wasn’t “years” before third party apps either. Most of the useful ones were for public transport, messaging, GPS, maybe a few games.
Don’t let their questionable acts now, cloud your memory of what they did. Apple nailed it with the iPhone. They were the under dog back then and took down all the big players to bring smart phones and digital software purchases to the masses.