[vlovich123]

You’re right. The first iPhone was so bad that “the Google phone” was delayed by many months as they scrambled to completely redesigned their launch phone to be multitouch instead of keyboard.

The razr2 sold 5M units and the sidekick sold 3M to iPhone 1’s 6.1M.

The n95 did outsell the iPhone with 10M units but Nokia had a massively more mature sales pipeline whereas Apple had to build out carrier relations. It also shipped before the iPhone was even announced which gave it time to accumulate sales.

Everyone in the space though recognized how big it was because carriers were going out of their way to try to get it on their network (since at the time Apple was doing 1 carrier per country). Apple got lucky that AT&T bought Singular which made the iPhone accessible to many many more people.

3GS’s 37 million units was because Apple had 2 years to build up manufacturing capacity and carrier sales channels to match demand for what had become clearly a smartphone revolution.

[foobarian]

The big things I remember from that era is that the iPhone was the first phone with an unlimited data plan which Apple/Jobs beat AT&T into submission to get. Until then you had to worry about every last byte you used on the dinky carrier-grade apps and the lousy WAP websites.

This worry removed, and the fact you actually had a real browser that could open real websites were the two main features that to me seemed like a huge leap forward.

[theatrus2]

Its also clear that the carrier wasn't ready for it. People with the original iPhone would get entire boxes mailed to them for their Cingular statement, itemizing every data transaction, but then all flat rate charged.

[S_A_P]

I had an original iPhone and did not get such statements. As I recall while Cingular was indeed not ready to handle unlimited data for customers, it wasn’t really a problem for the first iPhone since it wasn’t 3g. Once the 3g dropped , it was a problem since people were actually able to consume a large amount of data.

[goosedragons]

It very famously happened to iJustine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdULhkh6yeA

[saghm]

> The n95 did outsell the iPhone with 10M units but Nokia had a massively more mature sales pipeline whereas Apple had to build out carrier relations.

Am I remembering correctly that originally the iPhone only supported AT&T? My family all was on a shared Verizon plan at the time, and I have a vague recollection of the fact that it wasn't an option for us, but I'm not positive I remember correctly. Nowadays, the idea of a phone not being possible to purchase for a given network seems silly, but I feel like it was a thing at the time.

[mperham]

> Am I remembering correctly that originally the iPhone only supported AT&T?

Yes, for the first few years. Within a year or two, the writing was on the wall and the other providers were dying to get it.

[MBCook]

Which is partly why the Motorola(?) Droid phones got so popular.

Verizon couldn’t have the iPhone, so they pushed that as their equivalent with a huge marketing campaign. Always felt to me like that single-handedly pushed Android into the public consciousness.

Like without that maybe Android would be huge, but we updated have gotten the name recognition. Or at least not so fast, and instead would have been more of an implementation detail in most people’s minds.

Sprint tried to compete with the Palm Pre which was neat but had issues. Then Verizon got the Pre and Sprint’s last shot at relevance died.

[bschmidt1]

Yeah it was only available on AT&T and you couldn't even send pictures (MMS). Hindsight is 20/20 - the people in this thread are overly glamorizing Apple and smartphones in general now because it's easy after something was already successful (the number of influencers on this post is vomit-inducing). In reality smartphones were a tough sell at first, people didn't like the touchscreen at first, it took a ton of marketing push to get people used to them that took years. I was 21 years old when iPhone came out and remember it perfectly clear - also just google sales data. iPhone was selling single digit millions in the first years, nowhere near the 100+ million Razrs sold, or the amount Nokia or RIM were selling.

"But they were new to the space!" "It was still a good start!" is peripheral

[jjtheblunt]

keyboard and scroll ball integrated beneath it on the proto google phone...we had one at qualcomm

[duskwuff]

The scroll ball showed up on some early production devices, like the HTC Dream. Directional keypads lasted even longer.

[jjtheblunt]

i'd forgotten the directional keypads!

[qwytw]

> The first iPhone was so bad that “the Google phone”

It was prototype though. A lot of people could see the potential but the device itself was pretty bad.

[bschmidt1]

According to a quick search the 2006 Razr sold 50 million units (130 million total) but the first iPhone only sold 1.4 million when it released in 2007. iPhone was nowhere near Razr sales. Your comment is a bit disingenuous because that was the less popular Razr after flip phones were on the way out.

Nokia and Blackberry were selling a lot more than both brands at the time. Blackberry alone had 20%+ market share when the Pearl was released. Nokia sold the most phones by far.

[vlovich123]

You’re comparing unrelated things and completely discounting that Apple was a completely new entrant into the space vs entrenched players that had already established sales channels and carrier relations and were selling globally vs US-only to start for Apple.

Apple sold over 6M units of the first iPhone unless you’re saying 1.4M in the first quarter after launch since it launched in September. I was comparing it to phones released at a similar time and claiming that sidekick was somehow more successful is straight up laughable regardless of how you look at it.

The first iPhone defined what the smartphone category should be. Google took heed which saved Android. Nokia and blackberry did not and you can tell where they’re at now.

[bschmidt1]

> Apple was a completely new entrant into the space vs entrenched players that had already established sales channels

So? If anything it supports the point that iPhone wasn't an immediate success. It wasn't as successful as the Razr flip phone was before it, not for a while. The original point was just that it would have been difficult to predict the success of iPhone even after it released, because it didn't do that well at first.

[vlovich123]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_(1st_generation)

> In its first week, Apple had sold 270,000 iPhones domestically.[47] Apple sold the one millionth iPhone 74 days after the release.[48] Apple reported in January 2008 that four million were sold.[49] As of Q4 2007, strong iPhone sales put Apple no. 2 in U.S. smartphone vendors, behind Research In Motion and ahead of all Windows Mobile vendors.[50]

> As of October 2007, the iPhone was the fourth best-selling handset in the U.S., trailing the Motorola RAZR V3, the LG Chocolate, and the LG VX8300.[51]

I’d say being the #2 smartphone vendor on your first model and beating all Windows Mobile would be a fantastic first step and a clear indicator it would be extremely successful in addition to being #4 across all us handsets. 4M were sold in the first 6 months. You’re just simply misremembering how big it was and how well it sold.

The 3G version the next year sold 4x as many units (25M) . You could say it’s because 3G was such a huge upgrade our other software things like mms and App Store, but the first iPhone was in 6 countries while 3G was in 22 and got to 70. The 3GS did outdo the growth of that since it shipped 5M more units than would be explained just by being available in more countries (80 vs 70).

Could you predict it would end up dominating the smartphone market even as that market ate up more of the legacy feature phone market? Maybe that’s harder but the iPhone’s success wasn’t all that hard. The lack of any competition that could really keep up was another indicator. Android was a pretty big failure for a few years until enough of the feature set became parity and table stakes that people felt comfortable using it (or because Android was available in a lower price segment Apple wasn’t competing in).

[MBCook]

The 3G was also released with the App Store, which we all know quickly became a huge hit.

The iPhone 2G was an interesting phone. But there were no 3rd party apps until the software update that came out at the same time as the 3G.

The 3G had (insert app here). And boy did that drive sales.

[bschmidt1]

> entrenched > a fantastic first step

It's not like Apple was some scrappy startup going up against giants, when their profits had been in the billions for years prior to the iPhone, which by the way followed the MacBook launch in 2006.

> strong iPhone sales put Apple ... behind Research In Motion

Are you aware that RIM is Blackberry? This is what I've been saying, iPhone was behind the others like Blackberry, Razr, Nokia, etc.

> As of October 2007, the iPhone was the fourth best-selling handset in the U.S., trailing the Motorola RAZR V3, the LG Chocolate, and the LG VX8300.

Yep. 1 million is a lot, but Razr was selling 10s of millions, Blackberry and Nokia were selling more than that. But yeah I guess iPhone had the super cheap carrier phones beat, but they weren't meant to be high end products.

> The 3G version the next year sold 4x as many

Yeah that's when it started to take over. Especially when the 3GS / $99 AT&T plan came out, everyone got it by then.

Predicting hits: What about bluetooth headsets? They were forcing them on us around the same time period we're talking about now... but only a few geeky dads and cheesy business guys used them, eventually they weren't really sold anywhere, comedians had been referencing them at this point. Having lived through that era I would have never predicted the success of Airpods. As I said in my above post it wasn't like we didn't have touchscreen devices. I don't recall being as receptive to the touchscreen as you do, seemed like most people outside the Apple cult initially hated it.

[vlovich123]

> It's not like Apple was some scrappy startup going up against giants, when their profits had been in the billions for years prior to the iPhone, which by the way followed the MacBook launch in 2006.

First I think you may be misremembering your Apple history. The iPhone was very much Apple’s first product release post their iPod success which rescued their company. While they weren’t a failing company that they were in 2001 (like near banrukpt failing) they were not by any means a behemoth. In 2006 they made 2B in profit on 10B of revenue. By comparison Nokia made $7B in profit. Looking at MacBook belies that you seem to not realize how insignificant those sales were to Apple’s revenue (and how that’s even more true today even though they’ve actually grown their market share in that segment).

> Are you aware that RIM is Blackberry? This is what I've been saying, iPhone was behind the others like Blackberry, Razr, Nokia, etc.

Except not. Razr isn’t a smartphone and iPhone outsold any smartphones that Nokia made. By 2007 when Apple shipped the iPhone RIM had been shipping the blackberry for about 8 years and had completely taken over the enterprise segment which until Apple cracked it was considered to be the only place that smartphones would be successful and that it would perennially remain Blackberrie’s to lose. To have a competitor who’s never done cellular or smartphones before take #2 from the get go is huge considering how unlike traditional consumer electronics that Apple had engaged in until then, the sales channel and regulatory environment looked completely different. Think about it - one huge innovation they did was that you could buy the cell phone directly from them and through the Apple Store and they took care of the carrier onboarding experience. No one else attempted (or even could attempt) to do that.

You’re simply misremembering or trying to paint a weird picture that the first iPhone was this niche device no one wanted. That’s literally not true. It’s inherently impossible to enter a mature market and become #1 overnight. That Apple came in at #2 is really astounding and everyone was paying attention to it and Google literally hit pause on their launch by a year to completely redesign their OS because they saw it as the future.

> Having lived through that era I would have never predicted the success of Airpods.

Well I worked at Apple before they launched AirPods and got to see an exec demo of them. From the first instant I knew they were going to be a hit. Did I know it was going to be a multi billion dollar business by itself? If I’d done the math on it I probably could have worked it out just from estimating an attach rate. I think you shouldn’t extrapolate your inability to predict hits to others and say no one saw things coming.

As for touch screens, we actually didn’t have capacitive touch screens. All the smartphones to date had been resistive and the introduction of multitouch that capacitive enabled as well as better scan rates made a huge difference. I think you’re outing your viewpoint when you’re discounting people who were enthusiastic about the iPhone as members of a cult even now without allowing for the possibility that maybe they see something you don’t. Same kind of reasoning happened with the iPod too and I made the same mistake thinking they wouldn’t be big and it was this weird Apple thing and the UX seemed weird until they fixed their strategy to open it up to Windows users. My excuse was that I was still a teenager so I didn’t have sufficient perspective. Btw not everything Apple touches is gold immediately. I think they’re going to struggle with Vision Pro. I think they did a bunch of novel interesting UX innovations but the “killer product” hasn’t been built in that space yet and Meta is a much savvier opponent than they have ever had to face to date in a new product line.