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| History of The Apple 🍎 |
The Apple Iphone
The history of the iPhone begins, as often, with a rumor. Surely one of the longest in Apple's history, since for many years observers of all kinds have perpetuated information, never confirmed, that
Apple was preparing a revolutionary cell phone. However, we know that the brand constantly has many projects in its boxes, and that only a part of them ever appear on the market. Now that the myth has become reality, it's time to take a look back at the genesis of the iPhone ...
From the end of the 90s, the mobile telephony market exploded: in a few years, the mobile telephone went from a niche market for wealthy people to a most lucrative mass market. Several manufacturers share the largest share of sales, with products standardized around international standards.
Very quickly, some people begin to imagine that Apple is taking advantage of its know-how in terms of design, graphical interface, and integration with the computer, to join the dance. At the same time, regrets to have seen the Newton disappear in favor of other PDAs (in particular equipped with an adapted version of Windows), and the emergence of the Tablet-PC market, of which Apple is absent, make the will likely Apple to counter-attack by marrying the best of different technologies.
The term “iPhone” is obviously not due to chance. Since December 15, 1999, Apple has owned the domain name “iPhone.org”, among hundreds of other sites with names more or less evocative but not used. Moreover, with the appearance of the iMac, the iBook, or even the iPod between 1998 and 2001, it seemed obvious that if Apple were to release a phone, it would name it that way.
It was in 2002 that serious business began. The New York Times opens the ball in August, returning to words of Steve Jobs, definitively dismissing the idea of resuming the development of a PDA, but discussing the future of the mobile telephony market. From September, the magazine Science et Avenir takes to the game by broadcasting a well-known image on the Internet, marriage of a telephone with rounded shapes and translucent materials, and a miniature PDA..
During the month of December, we learn that Apple has registered in several countries the “iPhone” brands, associated with various software patents. Soon after, QuickTime opens up to mobile video with the 3GPP module.
It then becomes difficult to make believe that the brand does not have some projects in the field of telephony, even if the applications can be numerous: mobile telephony, on-board system, communicating iPod, videophone, instant messaging… From this moment on , the fake stolen photos and the real views of artists will follow one another at a frantic pace: most often, simple make-up of commercial phones, sometimes decked out with a wheel like that of the iPod. From 2003, each Steve Jobs Keynote is an opportunity to predict the likely arrival of an iPhone,
During the year 2004, information circulated: Apple would work on an embedded version of iTunes, allowing to buy and play music on a cell phone. The newspaper Le Figaro specifies at the beginning of June that it is Motorola which must design the famous telephone. If it is slow in coming, the Mac version of iTunes 4.9 reveals, however, shortly after, a few secrets:
we are indeed talking about a cell phone manufactured by Motorola, the possibility of storing music, and we there is even a small icon representing it! Once again, it is Le Figaro which sells the wick during the month of August: the iTunes compatible phone, and from the Motorola range, will be called RoKR. Officially presented in September, this device disappoints users: no particular innovation,
So obviously, we were not going to stop there! Seeing the RoKR nominated among “Worst Products of 2005” gives many ideas: this time, Apple will release its own mobile phone, which will be as revolutionary as an iPod, an iMac, a Mac! Moreover, to ensure a rapid take-off in sales, Apple would have partnered with the Japanese giant SoftBank. Finally, that's what the rumors say in May 2005. Rumors immediately denied.
What does it matter! If not SoftBank, it will be Research in Motion, the maker of the BlackBerry, the most famous smartphone. And it is not Peter Oppenheimer, CFO of Apple, who will discourage fans by explaining that the iPod is much better than the new Sony Walkman phone, and that it will evolve further!
In September 2006, it was the financial analysts who set about it. Some are starting to strongly recommend the purchase of Apple shares, seeing a future iPhone at the end of their spotting
scopes. Some are already thinking of predicting its sales figures: 8 to 12 million for 2007, I promise! And it is again iTunes, version 7, which sells the wick: its resources are full of messages intended to be displayed when synchronizing with a mobile phone: movies, music, shows, and even games, nothing is missing. the call ! And as if that were not enough, we discover the following month an Apple patent, which allows the same device to take a photo and locate it automatically on Google Maps software, by GPS.
In October 2006, everything accelerated: a small ad on the Apple site told us that the brand was looking for a “Mobile Marketing Manager”, in other words, a mobile phone marketing manager! In November, it is rumored that Foxconn, the current iPod manufacturer, would be responsible for building the famous phone.
Inside, we would find the PortalPlayer chips common with the iPod. As for the operator, it should be Cingular, at least in the United States. Having a phone built by a manufacturer who knows nothing about it and competing with operators who sell their music much more than iTunes, the challenges to be met are sizeable for Apple!
With the approach of the inaugural Keynote of the MacWorld Expo, scheduled for January 9, 2007, spirits are heating up… On the Internet and in well-informed circles, we take the bets: iTV, iPhone, large screen iPod, Leopard, what goes to present Steve Jobs? And at what cost? The more timid think that, all things considered, Apple will wait a few more months.
A twist a few days before Steve Jobs' conference: on December 18, the Linksys company presents a new family of products, called iPhone. It is a wireless telephone dedicated to voice over IP, and compatible with Skype and Yahoo Messenger. The parent company, Cisco, has in fact owned the term “iPhone” since it bought Infogear, a Californian start-up which had registered it in 1996.
January 9, 2007 finally arrives. After a few minutes, Steve Jobs announced a new large touchscreen iPod, a revolutionary phone and an unrivaled internet browser. And these are not three products, but only one!
Prototype in hand, the boss of Apple embarks on a demonstration of this tool. No keyboard, but a large fully touch screen, with the ability to track several fingers at the same time: “multi-touch” was born. We will learn later that this demonstration has been carefully prepared: the device is still very unstable, and all the sequences were performed in a determined order to work around the bugs! In addition, Cingular installed a relay antenna specially in the room to guarantee the availability of the network during the demonstration,
On the back of the device, there is a two-megapixel digital camera. On the top, a standard jack to connect his headphones. On the side, a compartment to house the SIM card. Inside, a 4 or 8 GB flash hard drive. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, quad band network (3G is not announced). On the software side, everything is there: images, videos, emails, web, chat, iTunes… and even Google Maps!
More than a phone, it's a pocket Mac, which dethrones all the so-called “smartphones” on the planet! At 499 or 599 dollars depending on the capacity of the disc, the device is not cheap, but it is a dream. Regarding the release dates, we are announcing the month of June for the United States, a little later for Europe, and 2008 for Asia: we will have to be patient!
Even more impressive: the phone would ship a specific version of Mac OS X, which the manufacturer calls “OS X”. Managing multi-tasking, energy saving, advanced display (transparencies, animations), this one would have nothing to envy its big brother. It would occupy 500 MB on the disk. On the other hand, there is no question of developing its own software or searching for it on the internet: the iPhone would be a closed platform, just like the iPod, and only Apple could offer new software. As for knowing what's inside: mystery! Intel denies the information according to which it would equip the iPhone.
While it seems obvious, at first, that Cisco and Apple had to find common ground on the name iPhone, things don't seem that simple. In fact, a few days after the announcement, Cisco sued Apple for trademark violation. We then learn that the two companies had been in talks for five years, and that these continued until
The day before the keynote, without success, Apple refusing to comply with Cisco's requirements, which wanted interoperability between the products. However, while the outcome of the lawsuit seems to have come to the detriment of Apple, a lawyer more tenacious than the others seeks to prove that Cisco lost its property in the name iPhone, for lack of having renewed the administrative formalities in time. . The marketing of the Cisco iPhone would have come a year too late,
A few days before its release on the American market, Apple announced that the iPhone would be compatible with Web 2.0 “applications”. Through this, the brand therefore offers developers to create their own programs, which will be launched by means of Safari, while allowing to customize their interface. Apple therefore succeeds in reconciling security and openness.
At the same time, we learn that energy management has been improved since the first press presentations: we now get 8 hours of talk time, up to 24 hours of music, and even up to 10 days of standby . We also discover that Google and Apple have decided to make the YouTube video service compatible with the Apple phone, and that the activation of the phone will be done simply by iTunes.
Finally, on June 29, 2007 at 6 p.m. (local time for all US stores), the long-awaited object goes on sale. For several days, the most impatient had started queuing in front of Apple Stores and AT&T stores. Difficult at first to know the sales figures: 250,000, 500,000, a million? The shops quickly found themselves running out of stock, even if the supply followed well.
The only downside: while waiting for the official figures, AT&T admits having only carried out 150,000 line activations during the first weekend. Very relative slump, since even in these conditions, the iPhone would do better than the iPod in its time (150,000 sales in two months), and would have won in a few hours nearly 1% of the market for “smartphones” ...
Still, the iPhone remains at the top of the bill. And like any new device, it attracts the curious, eager to put it to the test. A first flaw was thus discovered in a few days: it would make it possible to retrieve information from a wifi network, and even to have the iPhone dial numbers!
A first million iPhones are sold before September 10. Many customers have tried to explore its guts to make it work with operators other than AT&T, or add
applications. The first to achieve this is a 17-year-old American teenager, after five hundred hours of hard work. A few taps of the soldering iron, quite a few lines of code, and here's the iPhone ready to converse with competitor's SIM cards. Other hackers followed suit in the weeks that followed, creating increasingly simple procedures, then software that automatically unlocked the phone.
Immediate result: a real traffic is organized. In the United States, where the phone is sold “naked” (that is to say without immediate subscription), some people have the idea of buying iPhones in bulk, then reselling them unlocked to buyers happy to keep. their package and their operator. Incidentally,
intermediaries pocket a substantial margin, since iPhones are sold at 800, 900, or even 1000 dollars on the “gray” market. To avoid the bleeding, Apple decides to limit to 2 the number of iPhones that each customer is entitled to take. It must be said that the rumors about the negotiations between Apple and the operators show huge sums at stake: the former would affect the latter up to 30% of telephone bills! It is a real revolution in the world of telephony,
As of September 5, Apple will lower the price of its toy: $ 399 for the 8 GB version, the 4 GB version disappearing from the catalog. To be forgiven, the apple offers its first customers a discount voucher of 100 dollars on their next purchases. And for all those who want an iPhone without needing telephony functions, Apple decides to present a new iPod, with the same technical characteristics as the iPhone: the iPod Touch, at 299 dollars.
Everywhere in Europe, over the official launches, we find the same scenario: stores open at night, endless queues, and journalists in shambles. In Great Britain, where the operator O2 has won the exclusivity, then in Germany with T-mobile, and in France, where the Orange store on the Champs-Elysées will welcome 2,000 people on the night of the launch. This phone, which some people already call the “Jesus Phone”, is voted “Invention of the year” by Time magazine.
Soon enough, however, iPhone sales appeared disappointing in Europe. Thus, in France, only 70,000 devices found a buyer between November 29 and December 31, 2007. In Germany, it will take six months to sell 100,000. The problem is not insurmountable for Apple, which reached the figure of 5 million at the same time. On February 5, 2008, a 16 GB iPhone completes the catalog, in order to satisfy audiophiles, cinephiles, and photophiles (?).
In fact, when the iPhone was launched, everyone had only one word in mind: “iPhone 3G”. In the face of the outcry over the absence of this technology in his phone, it was obvious that Apple would eventually integrate it. Steve Jobs had even hinted at it when the launch of the “all-short” iPhone was in full swing. Rumors will only increase during the first half of 2008, and the days leading up to the Keynote of the Worldwide Developper Conference on June 9, 2008 will see the Internet teeming with photos, technical specifications and confidences. Steve Jobs will put an end to it by unveiling the new iPhone 3G: a black or white plastic back, a GPS chip, and finally a standardized audio jack. 70 countries will be affected by the marketing, from July 11, at a price up to three times lower than the original iPhone. Indeed, Apple is also changing its marketing technique.
Rather than puncturing the operator on the price of the package each month, Apple authorizes it to subsidize the purchase price. Thus, the buyer pays for a cheaper product, the operator paying the difference to Apple in one go.
Of course, this new iPhone includes version 2.0 of operating system sounds, which allows you to download software from other developers. Indeed, since March, Apple had made public a “beta” version of its development kit to create new applications for iPhones. In addition, the new iPhone becomes compatible with Microsoft's Exchange system, which manages e-mails, calendars, and contact directories.
In one year, the iPhone has met with a success exceeding all estimates: the development kit has been downloaded a million times, and the App Store has hosted no less than 50,000 applications, themselves downloaded a billion times out of 40 million iPhones and iPod Touch!
It must be said that this year saw the proliferation of offers to the general public. In France, for example, Orange's exclusivity on the sale of iPhones fell in December 2008, and the three operators are now selling the precious phone. Better still, competition has led them to develop their offers, in particular by offering internet television from April 2009.
This development did not only make people happy. Not only is the competition struggling to stay afloat (the iPhone thus represented 50% of internet traffic for smartphones at the start of 2009), but iPhone application developers complain of delays in validation by Apple, as well as sometimes abusive refusals. , based on rather obscure criteria.
On June 9, 2009, in front of the developers gathered for the WWDC, Apple presented the new features planned for iPhone OS 3.0, the same one that had been previewed on March 17. One hundred new ones worked, some of which were eagerly awaited: the "Cancel" menu, copy and paste, generalized landscape mode, MMS, global search, modem mode (surcharged by the operator), support for HTML 5 by Safari Mobile, a remote iPhone geolocation service, the rental and purchase of movies on iTunes, the purchase of extensions in applications (for example to add levels to a game, or cards to a GPS application), the Peer2peer allowing to connect two iPhones… Among the expected novelties, a real GPS application: Tomtom arrives on iPhone.
In an unchanged shell, the various elements are improved: a faster processor (the ARM Cortex-A8 at 600 Mhz replaces the ARM11 at 400 Mhz), more memory (256 MB against 128), a latest generation 3G chip (HSDPA at 7.2 Mbps), a 3.2 Megapixel video-capable camera (with integrated video editing software), voice control, a compass so you never get lost when getting out of the subway, improved access for disabled, and a beefier battery. In short, enough to let the competition calmly come.
Indeed, during 2009, two major competitors arrive on the market where the iPhone already reigns supreme against Blackberries and the rare mobile devices equipped with Windows.
The first to launch is Google, which launches its Android system, which initially equips the G1, HTC mobile presented in October 2008. The system gives access to the Android Market (the equivalent of the App Store), manages multitouch (although this function is disabled by default), and, surprise, relies on Apple's WebKit engine to display web pages.
The second to launch is Palm, a pioneer in the handheld computer market, overtaken by the smartphone revolution. Since the arrival at its head of Jon Rubinstein, former head of the iPod division at Apple, the brand has refocused its activities, like Apple when Steve Jobs returned.
In particular, the brand abandoned the Foleo project, a sort of small laptop equipped with a priority system, to focus on launching a competitor to the iPhone. The Palm Pré is distinguished by a sliding keyboard, thus avoiding bothering with the virtual keyboard displayed on the iPhone screen. More successful than Google's Android, Palm's WebOS system convinces its first users, in June 2009. Unlike the iPhone, it offers
multitasking, allowing to keep several applications open at the same time. Its interface is pleasant, although its functionality remains limited, in particular because it forces developers to be satisfied with HTML and javascript, where Apple offers more than a thousand programming interfaces.
At the start of 2010, Google gets involved further in the dance by announcing its own phone, the Nexus One, which it manufactures and sells itself, obviously equipped with its Android system. This is, for Google, the opportunity to show third-party manufacturers how to “properly build” an Android phone.
The success will not be at the rendezvous for Palm, since it will be bought by HP in April 2010 without its system being imposed. The second will abandon its phone model in July, but will be inspired by the success of Windows by refocusing on the Android system, embedded in a growing number of phones (especially to the detriment of Windows Mobile and Blackberries). IN number of units sold, Android will overtake the iPhone from the first quarter of 2010 according to some studies.
The iPhone 3GS is launching with a bang, a million copies selling in three days. Its economic model based on the App Store is a real success, nearly 100,000
applications being offered there in the fall of 2009, and downloaded more than three billion times at the same time. It is in this context that the brand unveils, on April 8, 2010, a first version of its future iPhone OS 4, including multitasking (limited to certain functions to protect performance and battery), icon files, l application iBooks and other new features and improvements in spades.
At the same time, Apple is working with great success on its future iPhone “4G” as it is then nicknamed. The replacement for the 3GS is discovered, forgotten (or stolen?) In a bar, and the Gizmodo website is broadcasting images of it. Then begins a real judicial soap opera, Apple triggering criminal proceedings to find out the circumstances of this leak, which will lead to a search of the home of the editor of Gizmodo. A first in the eventful history of Apple and rumor sites that track its novelties.
The presentation, official this time, of the iPhone 4, as it is now called, will take place on June 7, 2010 during a Worldwide Developper Conference (WWDC) which will be entirely devoted to it.
In addition to the new features brought by iOS 4, as it is also called now, we discover a screen of exceptional resolution (960 x 640 pixels or 326 dots per inch) which Apple gives the name of “Retina Display” for mean that it exceeds the capacity of perception of the retina; we also discover a new 5 Megapixel camera of impressive quality, equipped with a fill-in flash, and also capable of producing 720p HD video; a second front camera, dedicated to videoconferencing using FaceTime technology; a 3-axis gyroscope much more precise than the accelerometers of previous versions; a battery that lasts up to 40%; and an A4 processor inherited from the iPad (although a little less swift). All in 9.3mm thickness!
The brand will not be spared from the problems with this model: it is first of all the white model which is rejected several times following assembly line problems; then, obviously, a shortage of black models in the face of very strong demand (1.7 million copies sold the first weekend); but also and above all, a heated controversy over reception problems. Indeed, Apple has chosen to use the metal shell of the device as an antenna. Several parts of this shell are therefore separated by thin plastic lines to avoid interference between the different
antennas. However, the simple fact of taking the phone in the hand would cause them to come into contact with the skin, which is conductive. The reception performance would therefore be achieved.
The scandal is such that we quickly talk about Antennagate! Coming from Apple, such an error, although very rarely disabling in practice, is a godsend for its competitors who laugh at this phone that should not be held in the hand. Apple responds in several stages, with a certain lack of tact: first by posting a comparison on its website, showing that all phones have similar problems, then by explaining that it is simply the level indicator.
reception which is bogus, and then finally by offering a free plastic protective shell to the first customers of the phone. At the end of a class-action, Apple will finally be ordered in 2012 by the Court of the Northern District of California to reimburse $ 15 to each buyer of iPhone 4,
For some observers, this crisis marked the end of adolescence for the brand, losing its status as a "start-up" to which we forgive everything, to gain a foothold in the world of multinationals whose crisis management must make l object of special attention and communication.
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