The iPhone is 10 years old TODAY but Apple says ‘the best is yet to come’
It's been a decade since Steve Jobs first showed off his firm's pioneering smartphone
IT'S BEEN ten years since Steve Jobs revealed the iPhone to the world.
And whether you're an Apple fan or not, it's hard to deny the launch changed the world.
As the tech industry celebrates this important milestone, Apple has promised that it has even more surprises on the way.
Tim Cook, CEO, said: “iPhone is an essential part of our customers' lives, and today more than ever it is redefining the way we communicate, entertain, work and live.
“iPhone set the standard for mobile computing in its first decade and we are just getting started. The best is yet to come."
It was on January 9 2007 that late Apple founder and chief executive Steve Jobs went on stage at the company's Macworld event to announce the tech giant was to reveal "an iPod, a phone and an internet communicator".
But rather than three separate products being revealed, he showed off one device that would change how we used phones forever.
Since then, Apple has sold more than one billion iPhones around the world and has become one of the biggest companies ever.
But increasing pressure from competitors and the smartphone market beginning to reach saturation point has created new pressures - 2016 has seen sales of the iPhone drop for the first time in the device's history.
Anger over cutting out earphone jacks in favour of AirPods and launching devices that can only work with specific, and often expensive, accessories has seen Apple fall from grace.
Pressure from the likes of Samsung, Google, HTC and Huawei has squeezed the popularity of the iPhone, as has the increase in higher-quality budget and mid-range devices that undercut the iPhone and others on price.
Since the initial announcement in 2007, Apple has introduced 11 new generations of iPhone, drastically redesigning the device on several occasions.
We recently revealed that the first iPhone might have looked a LOT different.
Developers have since altered the screen size and introduced an overall larger version of the phone with the iPhone 6 Plus in 2014, the first iPhone to feature a screen over five inches.
The iPhone also sparked the creation of the App Store, which launched in 2008 and has since been at the heart of the creation of a large number of hugely successful mobile app businesses, including the likes of Angry Birds, Uber and Deliveroo.
Such has been the success of the iPhone that as an individual business the revenue generated by the phone alone has exceeded that of some of its rivals, including Microsoft and Google.
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Analysts have referred to the device as a cultural icon and most modern smartphones have been inspired by the iPhone in some form.
The next version of the iPhone, which is expected to be unveiled in September, has already been rumoured to feature a larger screen that covers the majority of the front of the device.
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