Apple purchased the "" domain in December 1999. The whole effort was called Project Purple 2 and began in 2005. When Jobs reviewed the prototype and its user interface, he saw the potential in developing the concept into a mobile phone to compete with already established brands in the then emerging market for touch screen phones. Jobs recruited a group of Apple engineers to investigate the idea as a side project. This helped with removing the physical keyboard and mouse, the same as was common at the time for tablet computers, human machine interfaces and point of sale systems. He decided that the device would require a triple layered capacitive multi-touch touch screen, a very new and advanced technology at the time. The stylus was a common tool for many existing touchscreen devices at the time including Apple's own Newton, launched in 1993.
In 1999, Apple CEO Steve Jobs envisioned an Apple touchscreen product that the user could interact with directly with their fingers rather than using a stylus. The iPhone largely appealed to the general public, as opposed to the business community BlackBerry and IBM focused on at the time, and by integrating existing technology and expanding on usability, the iPhone turned the smartphone industry "on its head".
The introduction of the App Store allowed established companies and startup developers to build careers and earn billions of dollars via the platform, while providing consumers with new ways to access information and connect with other people. The iPhone quickly became Apple's most successful product, propelling it to the most profitable company at the time. Its successor, the iPhone 3G, was announced on June 9, 2008. It featured quad-band GSM cellular connectivity with GPRS and EDGE support for data transfer, and made use of continuous internet access and onboard processing to support features unrelated to voice communication. The device broke with prevailing mobile phone designs by eliminating most physical hardware buttons, and eschewing a stylus for its screen-based interface, instead featuring only a few physical buttons and a touch screen. After years of rumors and speculation, it was officially announced on January 9, 2007, and was released in the United States on June 29, 2007.ĭevelopment of the iPhone as a product began in 2005 and continued in complete secrecy until its public unveiling. The iPhone (also known as the iPhone 2G, iPhone 1, iPhone (original) ) is the first smartphone designed and marketed by Apple Inc.