Here is an article describing the iPhone’s five years of history. Key quote:
“So it can be hard to remember that the iPhone’s launch in 2007 permanently changed the smartphone. It left (and is currently leaving) its mark on the handset scene altogether; it kicked into gear a burgeoning mobile app industry that would be hard to live without today. And Apple now seems perpetually embroiled in countless patent suits with its competitors over what former Apple CEO Steve Jobs described as “a great theft” of Apple’s designs.”
Apple products are prone to hyperbole, but the iPhone truly did revolutionize the mobile space. Without the iPhone, there would be no iPad, and without iOS, there would be no Android, no Kindle Fire, no Nook, no Android tablet ecosystem. The iPhone also devoured its weaker competitors (I don’t miss Windows Mobile or Blackberry – both were terrible products), and literally kicked off the mobile device revolution.
And I suspect we can thank the iPhone for the ebook revolution as well, at least in part – the ebook marketplace is essentially the “app store” model carried over into books.
-JM