When Was The First iPhone Released?

The first iPhone was announced on January 9, 2007, at that year’s Macworld event. The device finally hit shelves in the US in June 2007, followed later that year with a release in Europe and then, finally, with a release in Asia in 2008. The iPhone was described as “a revolutionary mobile phone” and a “breakthrough Internet communications device” by Jobs, according to Business Insider. However, many skeptics greeted the iPhone’s release with doubt.

Then-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer stated in an interview with USA Today that “there’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.” However, he reversed his initial statement in an interview with Bloomberg in 2016, admitting that Microsoft had gotten into smartphones too late.

The iPhone put the “internet in your pocket,” as Steve Jobs said at D 2007, according to Engadget. In doing so, it brought with it a reinvention of mobile devices. At the time of its release, most phones had a split display and a QWERTY keyboard, or an old-style telephone keypad, and some form of slide or flip functionality. But the iPhone was “a revolutionary and magical product that [was] literally five years ahead of any other mobile phone,” according to Jobs.