Apple Introduces the iPhone

On January 9, 2007, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs took the stage at the Macworld conference in San Francisco to present a device that combined a widescreen digital media player, a mobile telephone, and an internet communicator. The product, named the iPhone, had been developed under the internal code name P2, short for Purple 2. It drew on earlier work by Apple engineers on touchscreen technology for a tablet computer. To bring the concept to market, Apple had partnered confidentially with Cingular Wireless, while retaining complete control over the phone's design, manufacturing, and marketing; one insider later estimated that Apple spent roughly 150 million dollars building the iPhone.

The physical design marked a distinct shift away from the mechanical numeric keypads and thumb keyboards that dominated the mobile phone market. With an aluminum back cover, the device featured a 3.5-inch liquid-crystal display covered in glass rather than hard plastic, after Jobs found that a prototype carried in his pocket needed a screen that would resist scratching. Interaction relied on a capacitive multi-touch system that recognized bare fingers, accompanied by only four physical buttons and a single ringer switch. Internally, it relied on an ARM11-generation processor, alongside an accelerometer, an ambient light sensor, and a proximity sensor that helped save power.