When the iPhone emerged in 2007, it came with all the promise and pomp of a major Steve Jobs announcement, highlighting its user interface and slick design as key selling points. We know now that the iPhone transformed the mobile phone business, the internet economy and, in many ways, society as a whole. But technically speaking, the iPhone was not very innovative.
Its software and the interface idea were based on the iPod, which was already <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/itunes-10th-anniversary-how-steve-jobs-turned-the-industry-upside-down-20130426">reinventing the digital music industry</a>. Touchscreens had appeared on earlier phone and tablet models, including <a href="http://oldcomputers.net/apple-newton.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Apple’s own Newton</a>. And <a href="http://nokiamuseum.info/category/launching-year/2007/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">top-line Nokia phones</a> had more memory, better cameras and faster mobile connectivity. What made the iPhone transformative was the <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/13/15782200/one-device-secret-history-iphone-brian-merchant-book-excerpt" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">shift in concept underpinning the entire iPhone project</a>: Its designers did not create a telephone with some extra features, but rather a full-fledged hand-held computer that could also make calls and browse the internet.
As a <a href="http://www.internationalinnovation.com/how-digitasation-is-changing-the-working-world/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">scholar of management, design and innovation</a>, I find it hard to predict what the next truly revolutionary technological development will be. In the 10 years since the launch of the iPhone, <a href="https://www.cnet.com/news/when-iphone-met-world-7-years-ago-today/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">so much about modern life, commerce and culture has changed</a>. In part that’s because the iPhone, and the smartphone boom it spurred, created a portable personal technology infrastructure that’s almost infinitely expandable. The iPhone changed the game not because of its initial technology and cool user interface but rather as a result of its creators’ imagination and courage.
<h2>Inventing mobile apps</h2>
As the iPhone took shape, its designers found themselves <a href="http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/brian-merchant/the-one-device/9781478915836/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">torn between making a phone or a computer</a>. Engineers and marketing executives alike worried the new device would kill the iPod market that had <a href="http://business.time.com/2012/09/14/without-music-apple-would-be-nothing/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">driven Apple’s corporate resurgence for five years</a>. Nokia, <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/263438/market-share-held-by-nokia-smartphones-since-2007/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the biggest player in the cellphone market at the time</a>, had similar technologies and prototypes, and also <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304388004577531002591315494" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">feared outcompeting</a> its own successful mobile phone product lines that used a simpler and more old-fashioned software platform than that on which iPhone was built.
Apple took the leap, however, by installing a fully capable computer operating system on the iPhone, along with a few small application programs. Some were phone-related, including a program that handled making and receiving calls, as well as <a href="https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2007/01/09Apple-Reinvents-the-Phone-with-iPhone/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a new way to display voicemail messages</a>, and a system that kept different contacts’ text messages separate. Others were more computer-like, including an email app and a web browser. Of course, the music-playing features from the iPod were included too, linking the phone with the emerging Apple music ecosystem.
Initially, that was about it for apps. But <a href="https://www.cultofmac.com/164137/meet-geohot-guy-who-unlocked-the-first-iphone-and-hacked-the-sony-ps3/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">skilled computer engineers and hackers</a> knew they were holding a palm-sized computer, and set to work writing their own software and <a href="https://www.cultofmac.com/213904/how-far-weve-come-the-original-iphone-jailbreak-took-74-steps-jailbreak/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">getting it running on their iPhones</a>. That was the dawn of the now-ubiquitous app. Within a year, these apps were so popular, and their potential so significant, that <a href="http://www.macworld.com/article/1134503/iphone2update.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Apple’s second version of the iPhone operating system</a> made it easy (and legal) for users to install <a href="http://www.phonecruncher.com/features/00942/the-first-ever-apps-on-the-app-store-gone-but-not-forgotten/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">apps on their phones</a>.
<h2>Shifting priorities</h2>
The prospect of making a fully functional hand-held computer changed how users and manufacturers alike thought about mobile phones. For Apple and every other phone company, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/iphone-android-smartphones-2011-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">software became much more important than hardware</a>. What apps a phone could run, and how quickly, mattered much more than whether it had a slightly better camera or could hold a few more photos; whether it flipped open, slid open or was a bar-style; or whether it had a large keyboard or a small one. The iPhone’s <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-reaction-first-iphone-2015-9" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">keyboard was on-screen</a> and software-generated, making a function that had required dedicated hardware into one running on generic hardware and dedicated software.
At the time of the iPhone launch, Nokia offered about 200 <a href="http://nokiamuseum.info/category/launching-year/2007/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">different phone styles to meet all the different needs</a> of its hundreds of millions of customers. There was just one iPhone model at the start, and in the ensuing decade there have been only <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_iOS_devices#iPhone" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">14 major styles</a> – though today they come in different colors, not just white and black as the original did. This is the power of software functionality and related simplicity.
The heightened importance of software on a mobile phone shifted the industry’s economy as well. The money came now not just from selling devices and phone services, but also from marketing and selling apps and in-app advertisements. <a href="https://www.recode.net/2016/6/8/11889298/google-apple-subscription-app-revenue-share" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">App developers must share revenue</a> with the <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/16/14634656/android-ios-market-share-blackberry-2016" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">companies that control smartphones’ operating systems</a>, providing serious earning power: Apple holds <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/16/14634656/android-ios-market-share-blackberry-2016/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">about 15% of the mobile phone market</a>, but reaps <a href="http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20170308000345" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">80% of global smartphone profits</a>.
Whatever the next tech industry game-changer is, and whenever it arrives, it will likely have some connection to the smartphone and related infrastructure. Even today, <a href="https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/10/13/virtual_reality_is_made_o_smartphones/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">exploring virtual reality</a> requires only installing an app and connecting just a bit of additional hardware to an existing phone. Similarly, smartphone interfaces and cameras already <a href="http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2410889,00.asp" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">monitor and control intelligent and automated homes</a>. Even as devices are developed to operate all around us, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/alphabets-new-plan-to-track-10-000-people-could-take-wearables-to-the-next-level-76620" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">even in our clothes</a>, many of them will be able to point to the iPhone as a conceptual ancestor and inspiration.  &#8211; Written by <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/kalle-lyytinen-336943" target="_blank" rel="author noopener noreferrer">Kalle Lyytinen</a>, Iris S. Wolstein Professor of Management Design, Case Western Reserve University
Originally published in <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Conversation</a>
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Understanding the real innovation behind the iPhone

More than 700 emails await Toby Shapshak, according to his Apple iPhone 4, lighting up on the retro red cabinet in the doorway of his Johannesburg home.
<div id="attachment_310" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-310" class="size-large wp-image-310" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/CTX8990-678x1024.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="716" />“[The cellphone] changed from something you hold next to your ear, to something you hold in your hand and look at.” Toby Shaphak</div>“I’m sure there’s many more than that,” he says.
What a difference a couple of decades makes. During the late 1980s, Shapshak wouldn’t have known what an email was and would have been carrying a cellphone that you could hammer a nail in with.
Compare again the iPhone of 2011 to the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X of 1983—the iPhone has 200 hours of standby time, a global positioning system that can geographically locate where you are and can send a picture of your mother to Thailand in two seconds. You had to charge the Motorola DynaTAC for 10 hours to make a one-hour call and it was as light as a lump of lead.
Shapshak, the South African editor of international men’s electronic magazine, Stuff, was one of the first journalists in the country to own a cellphone. “I remember being one of the only journalists with a cellphone and it was completely remarkable to be able to call the newsroom and tell people where I was or what I was doing [and] for people to be able to get hold of me. I remember putting my cellphone number on my first business card. You had a land line, your office address and your postal address, then I had a cellphone number and along came email.”
Motorola came up with the mobile phone in 1983; it weighed nearly a kilogram and could only be used to make calls, nothing else, with a small black screen used to see the numbers punched in the keypad.
Two years later, it reached African shores. Its first African customer was the then government of Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo.
<div id="attachment_312" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-312" class="size-large wp-image-312" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/7-1-1024x689.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="319" />Albert Gatare 2011</div>
According to the African Leadership Academy, President Mobutu Sese Seko issued the first ever private telecommunications licence to a company called Telecel, founded by Rwanda-born, Miko Rwayitare (who died in 2007) and American, Joseph Gatt.
Rwayitare and Gatt bought 200 of Motorola’s cellphones for President Mobutu and his administration, in a bid to convince the government to switch from land lines. They sold each phone for substantially more than what they were going for in the US at the time. It meant these phones were merely for the moneyed elite of Kinshasa.
Albert Gatare, Rwayitare’s youngest brother, was one of the first Africans to use the phone and says back then it was a symbol of wealth in the city.
“That time those phones were $3,000 or $4,000. It is difficult to understand [now] how people could have bought phones for that much.
“After the commercial launch, it became a symbol of high class; everyone knew that only ministers, CEOs and rich people had those types of phones. Today you take your phone and put it in your pocket, but that time when you went to a restaurant you would put it on the table, just to show off.”
<div id="attachment_311" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-311" class="size-large wp-image-311" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/4-717x1024.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="677" />Joan Joffe 1994</div>
Telecel’s success was also helped by the continent’s poor fixed landline system, says Gatare. According to Mobile Monday, an international networking organization run by mobile industry professionals, their 2011 Africa report showed that the number of mobile phones exceeded the number of fixed lines by the year 2000. The African Development Bank says the number of land lines is declining.
The company expanded from Zaire into nine other countries: Burundi in 1992; Guinea in 1993; Madagascar in 1994; Central African Republic in 1995; Ivory Coast in 1996; Zambia in 1997 and Zimbabwe, Niger and Togo in 1998.
In South Africa, Joan Joffe was one of the people who launched Vodacom in 1994, the same year she picked up her first cellphone.
“It was amazing that you could walk around and speak. It weighed a ton, though; you could not put it in your handbag, but it was amazing,” she says.
“Our forecast was for 250,000 subscribers in the first 10 years. I can tell you that we had a huge party when the number of connections reached 50,000 towards the middle of the first year. It was a big deal for us,” says Joffe.
Vodacom has customers in South Africa, Tanzania, Lesotho, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mozambique, and is considered one of the top four networks on the continent along with MTN, Airtel and Orange.
“Today single operators cannot survive, they must be part of a bigger group,” says Gatare.
Rwayitare sold 80% of his Telecel shares to various telecommunication companies, including Orascom in Egypt, MTN in the Ivory Coast and other smaller companies, for
around $47 million. He moved to South Africa, where he built the most expensive house in Johannesburg’s wealthy suburb, Sandhurst.
According to the International Telecommunication Union, in 2010 41.4% of Africans had a cellular subscription.
One of them is South African entrepreneur Jenna Clifford. The founder and designer of a luxury jewellery brand, in the late 1980s, she had what she called her “porty”—short for portable telephone.
“It looked like a little metal suitcase, but it was state of the art at that time. My previous husband bought his first porty and I saw the benefit of being contacted outside of the office and bought one of my own, [but] you could not take it overseas, the costing was huge in those days,” she says.
As her finger glides along the iPhone 4 in her palm, she says: “It has liberated me. It is not rocket science; you check the picture and you click.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-large wp-image-313" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Photos-1024x546.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="253" />
“I felt intuitively that with the advent of the porty, more people would be using them and they would get smaller. Just like computers were once the size of rooms,” says Clifford. “I’m a bit of a prophet.”
Africa is second only to Asia regarding the highest number of mobile subscriptions. And it is not finished yet.

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Understanding the real innovation behind the iPhone

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