[_jal]

> "Why on Earth would anyone want one of those!?"

That reaction really only came from makers of competing phones. (RIM execs famously refused to believe the battery life was possible, Balmer threw very unconvincing dismissals.)

Everyone else was standing in line to buy one.

[zwischenzug]

I think this is hindsight talking.

I remember thinking (and hearing):

'Way too expensive'

'I want a tactile keyboard'

'Nice, but I don't need one'

and so on.

[addicted]

The only commonwealthidespread complaint was about the lack of 3G and copy/paste.

However, the overwhelming response to the iPhone was extremely positive. Even from non Apple sources.

RIM didn’t think the iPhone was possible when it was first released. Google instantly changed the direction of their Android project when the iPhone was released.

[clouddrover]

> The only commonwealthidespread complaint

Maybe also complaints about bad autocompletion?

[Dylan16807]

"Too expensive" is a perfectly fine thing to think about a product like that, and is very far away from thinking nobody wants it.

Qwerty keyboards were always a niche, and "nice, but I don't need one" is reasonably classified as an underestimate of the product but it's still approval.

[OrgNet]

I still want a slide out keyboard like my Nokia N900 had... and if you don't think $1000 is overpriced for an I-Phone, you probably haven't tried a $300 phone that has very similar capabilities...

[MattRix]

It really wasn't that popular initially, at least nowhere near what it is today. There were only 1.5 million sales in 2007, and about 12 million in 2008. For comparison, there were over 210 million sold in 2018.

[Slartie]

Actually, the first one wasn't in that much demand, because it had laughably slow processor and cell standard support even by 2007 standards (no UMTS, which was already available on cell networks back then, just not with an iPhone). Apple fanboys stood in line for it and since Apple wasn't able to even produce enough for them, it seemed like "everyone wanted one".

The iPhone 3G changed this fundamentally; you didn't have to be a die-hard Apple fanboy to justify wanting one of those, because it was the only phone on the market that actually gave you sufficiently usable mobile access to "the real Internet".

[vidarh]

I certainly didn't stand in line. The iPhone seemed primitive and lacking to me at the time. And I wasn't alone in spending lots of money on alternative phones.