iPhone: 8 Years Old And Still Changing Mobile and Beyond

8 Years ago today, Steve Jobs unleashed Apple's most revolutionary device, the iPhone.  Since then, much has changed.  Did Apple expect the iPhone to become the best selling smartphone and serve as Apple's growth engine in the world?  Maybe but not to the extent it is today.

Did Apple expect the iPhone to spawn the iPad and move Apple further into mobile and into the wearable market with the Apple Watch?  Probably not.

Did Apple believe the iPhone to serve as the hub for the home and, by extension of CarPlay, the automobile?  And quite possibly, provide Apple with the financial resources to enter the auto industry with its own Apple Car?

And what about the disruptions into other markets?  Nintendo is in trouble in no small part its own fault with questionable choices in the console market but iOS gaming has disrupted Nintendo's Gameboy dominance in the mobile gaming market. 

And the consumer camera market?  Companies are still churning out cameras but if you look around, not many people still use them.  And Apple continues to innovate the iPhone camera with the goal of rivaling even the dSLR.  The iPhone camera is so good now that it even allows TV and film makers to make videos on the go and cheap.


It's also unlikely that Apple expected the iPhone with the App Store to create more than a million jobs while paying tens of billions to developers. 

While it is not worth our time to get into which mobile players are or are not still around (Palm is gone.  So is Nokia who sold its phone business to Microsoft.  Windows and Office profit continues to pay for Microsoft's Windows Phone adventures.  Blackberry, Motorola, and HTC are still around but barely), the iPhone has definitely been a huge deal on a scale beyond the mobile market.  And it feels like we're just finishing up the first quarter of the mobile game.  Apple ain't done with the iPhone just yet.