The iPhone - why is it so successful

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The iPhone – why is it so successful?
Adam Lalani M00549948
1 March 2016
University of Middlesex
School of Science & Technology
Dubai Campus
CCM4320
Network Systems and Services

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Table of contents
Page
Number (s)
Abstract 3
Introduction – Evolution and the Thirst for Bandwidth 4 - 7
The iPhone Release 8 - 9
Reasons for Popularity
A – Marketing and Psychology 10 - 11
B – Operating System 12 - 16
C – User Interface 17 - 20
D – Hardware 21 - 23
E – The App Store 24 - 28
Conclusion 29 - 30
List of References 31 - 38

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Abstract
The iPhone is a result of cumulative selection in the technology and mobile telephone space. It
has helped to drive the continual improvement in wireless data access (both mobile and Wi-Fi)
with its user-driven thirst for bandwidth. When released, its superior hardware blew away its
contemporary competition, in part thanks to psychological-based marketing techniques, but
mainly due to its unique user interface.
The underlying operating system, built on an almost 30 year old UNIX-like kernel, XNU, gave
it a sound basis for continual improvement. The inclusion of the world’s first desktop-class
web browser on a mobile phone made the competition seem dated, and was a key reason for
its initial success. With its well thought out, new, yet familiar, interface and intuitive touch
gesture based method of navigating the device and its applications it was a force to be reckoned
with.
Both built and designed with best practice industrial techniques, it was incrementally improved
with each iteration in order to inspire flocks of new users. The launch of the App Store filled
in the gaps left by the pre-loaded Apple created software led to an explosion of 1.5 million
available applications, thus allowing the iPhone to be used for almost every imaginable
scenario possible. All of this had led to Apple being the most valuable company and brand in
the world, and its success will likely continue for years to come.

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Introduction – Evolution and the Thirst for Bandwidth
The iPhone is the apex of a phenomenon often referred to as ‘Cumulative Selection’.
Cumulative selection is the idea that a complex end-product results from a sequence of non-
random steps that originate from ultimately or comparatively simple beginnings. (Dawkins,
1986) Simply put, the iPhone took all the useful incremental changes that had occurred in the
mobile telecommunications and computing space over an extended period of time and
converged them together to create what was a unique device, at the time of its launch.
Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press in 1440, similarly recombined existing
technologies when building his device – combining oil-based ink with screw presses that had
been previously utilised for the production of wine and olive oil (Shenkar, 2010) – had those
technologies not already existed, he would not have been able to converge them together to
create what was arguably the most important invention in human history. Therefore, using this
analogy it can be argued that the application of cumulative selection to the iPhone is not as
outlandish as it may have initially appeared to be.
Curwen and Whalley (2014), wrote that changes in technology generally move forward via a
series of generations or part generations. They also note that these changes are achieved either
through better hardware, software, or a combination of the two. Later on in the paper, this will
be returned to during a discussion on incremental hardware and software improvements.
According to Goggin (2009), the mobile phone is primarily an incremental adaptation of the
telephone, with this adaption process taking almost one hundred years, utilising many
improvements or revisions of increasing complexity beginning with the telegraph, the
reimagining of radio technology, the reworking of voice telephony and finally the future vision
of mobility and portability.
The earliest truly portable mobile phones appeared around 1980, and were severely hampered
by their size, weight and high cost to purchase and use – with handsets often providing perhaps
half an hour of talk time before their batteries ran out (Wicker, 2013). They ran on analogue

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mobile networks which were inherently insecure and allowed for malicious entities to
eavesdrop on telephone calls with great ease, amongst many other deficiencies. (Gardezi, 2006)
In order to eradicate such first generation analogue network issues, the Groupe Speciale Mobile
was formed in 1982, and was tasked with designing a Europe-wide spanning mobile
technology. (History | About Us – The GSMA Foundation) In 1987, as a result of this group,
the specification for The Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) was agreed upon,
and four years later (1991), the very first call using GSM technology was made by Finland’s
Prime Minister Harri Holkeri. (GSM celebrates 20 years, 2011)
Throughout the earlier half of the 1990s, many countries began to adopt the GSM specification
– and this transition from analogue mobile networks to digital networks provided an increase
in radio spectrum capacity. This allowed for the diffusion of mobile telecommunications to
become possible. In turn, this led to the increased usage of that capacity, and came to be a key
reason for the then sudden drastic increase in global subscriber numbers. (Gruber and
Verboven, 2001).
When mobile network usage and penetration increases, so does the investment in network
improvement (Gruber and Koutroumpis, 2011), – this adds strength to the idea that as mobile
device hardware develops (and is adopted by users) to better take advantage of existing mobile
networks, it helps to spur on the improvement in those networks.
Taking this further is the concept of ‘Arms Races’- “An adaption in one lineage…may change
the selection pressure on another lineage…giving rise to a counter-adaption. If this occurs
reciprocally, an… escalation or ‘arms race’ may result” (Dawkins and Krebs, 1979). This
theory, in a technological sense, was later to be confirmed by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Inc.,
during the D: All Things Digital Conference in 2007 when he said “…We're going to take
advantage of some of these investments in bandwidth…” (Block, 2007)
Further credence to the idea is lent by Chen and Zhao (2014), when they suggest that the
anticipated 78% increase in mobile data traffic between 2012 and 2016 is to be driven by smart
devices and their use of the wireless internet. This point is paramount, because initially it was
the mobile networks that had provided the bandwidth that mobile devices had cumulatively

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improved to better consume, and is now the exact opposite – the bandwidth is having to
increase due to the users (and their devices) thirst for it.
The additional available mobile bandwidth actually came about when network operators,
having reached high penetration rates with their mobile voice customers, then looked for other
ways to create revenue growth, leading them to invest in 3G (third generation) connectivity
and thus the updated network infrastructure to support it (West and Mace, 2010).
All of this was presaged by NEC chairman Koji Kobayashi in 1977 when he spoke of the future
convergence of computers and communications – envisaging a future of telecommunications
and (presumably mobile) computing closely entwined, and that this convergence would go
hand in hand with technological improvements in integrated circuit design. (Rumelt, 2011)
Wicker (2013) states that “… the rapid evolution of integrated circuits … has had a profound
effect on cellular hardware…” – it is therefore quite clear that Koji Kobayashi was very much
on the right track, years before the technology had caught up with his future vision.
Figure 1 – Some milestones in mobile telecommunications
(Laying the foundations for 5G mobile)

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The widespread adoption of the Internet in the latter half of the 1990s began to allow the
possibility of the diffusion and convergence of various technologies that Koji Kobayashi had
predicted many years earlier to become a reality. Organisations created websites and started to
use email instead of fax machines (and to a lesser extent Telex machines). Whilst it is quite
obvious today that allowing large groups of people to collaborate together over vast distances
is absolutely necessary for business growth and change, the underlying technology did not exist
until access to the Internet became prevalent.
Services, such as email, require at least a 2G data connection to allow message delivery to a
mobile handset. So, with organisations adopting widespread email use in the late 1990s, and
the mobile network becoming sufficiently capable of delivering the data to handsets in the early
2000s, this convergence/diffusion began to take place. Around the same time, in 2003, the
802.11g wireless network specification was released and became the de-facto standard for
organisations (Lee and Choi, 2008) – developed separately but then later to be cumulatively
selected and then converged to be part of the first iPhone. It can therefore be argued that
untethered data access was a key milestone along the way for the development of smartphones.
These incremental data access improvements led to the proliferation of a number of devices
that used this bandwidth to deliver more than just telephone conversation content to a user’s
handset. The breakthrough devices came through in late 2003 and early 2004 – the Palm Treo
600 (Morris, 2003) and the BlackBerry 7100t (Segan, 2004) respectively. These devices (for
their time) elegantly put together a package that combined a phone, email, web browsing (albeit
a limited experience) and instant messaging.
By 2007, BlackBerry had become the recognised smartphone market leader, with a significant
installed base mainly in the enterprise space (Vara, 2013). Their devices had hardware
keyboard based designs as a prominent feature of their products. When the iPhone had been
announced at the start of 2007, their company’s CEO Jim Balsillie had dismissed the iPhone
as not likely to be a serious threat or competition to their market share. (Vara, 2013)

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The iPhone Release
The iPhone went on sale on 29 June 2007 and its release was likened to that of a “cultural
event” and a “pivotal event in time” (Pedersen, 2008) People queued all night, for many hours,
to be one of the first to own this new device (Chen, 2009). This was no doubt due in part to the
fact that Apple had marketed the release so well beforehand – six out of ten Americans
surveyed on release day knew it was coming. (Pilkington and Johnson, 2007)
Upon its release, the iPhone already had a head start on its competitors due to Apple’s pre-
existing strengths as a systems integrator. They were already used to creating, designing and
manufacturing their own hardware and software. This, and the ability to take advantage of the
already operational iTunes ecosystem, that had been built around the iPod, enabled them to be
ahead of the others. (West and Mace, 2010)
These competencies have always been at the forefront of Apple’s success historically -
borrowing strategies that had been previously used by IBM, for their mainframes. Apple
operated as a vertically integrated supplier of hardware, computer operating system software
and web services that were built around their hardware/software core like iTunes and iCloud
(Bajarin, 2011) whilst simultaneously encouraging third-party application suppliers for their
equipment (Vecchio, 2004).
In 2007, the mobile internet on a smartphone was, at best, a limited experience. At that time,
telecom operators were operating a ‘walled garden’ approach, offering their own curated
content that often involved additional subscription costs to mobile internet users to access
music, videos and the like. (West and Mace, 2010) In the main, users were loath to pay for this
kind of content, especially as the ‘wired Internet’ was already providing large swathes of data
gratis. (West and Mace, 2010)

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The iPhone soon changed that with its fully functioning ‘desktop-class’ web browser called
Safari. When Apple officially unveiled the iPhone the point that it offered “…desktop-class
email, web browsing, searching and maps…” (Apple Reinvents the Phone with iPhone, 2007)
was hammered home as a massive unique selling point versus competing devices at the time.
In fact, it can be argued that web browsing was the “killer app” for the iPhone because it could
leverage the same approximately 1 trillion web pages already freely available to existing
desktop web users. (West and Mace, 2010)
Goggin (2009) also agrees with this line of thinking, when he states that the iPhone was a
mobile phone that was adapted specifically for the Internet and that has helped to put the device
in the middle of digital culture, computing and the Internet. The incremental improvements
over time with low power consumption integrated circuits had finally made it possible for
designers of mobile phones to use modular designs and architectures that allowed access to
content that had been specifically created for the PC but now on a mobile device – whilst at the
same time this modularity had led to lower costs for development, thus allowing Apple to enter
the mobile phone business despite not having a history in the industry until their entry (Funk,
2003, 2011).
In February 2008, Google reported that the Apple iPhone was the most popular mobile phone
using its search engine – most popular by a factor of 50! As described by Vic Gundotra,
Google’s head of mobile operations to the Financial Times “We thought it was a mistake and
made our engineers check the logs again.” (Palmer and Taylor, 2008)

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Reasons for Popularity
A - Marketing and Psychology
As previously discussed, after the iPhone had been announced, its release several months later
was hotly anticipated, with customers that were prepared to wait for many hours, come rain or
come shine, to be amongst the first people to own the device. (Goggin, 2009) (Figure 2)
Figure 2 – iPhone queues on launch day (Chen, 2009)
Such queues and events were commonplace - when the iPhone was launched in Poland in the
summer of 2008, it turned out that Telekomunikacja Polska, Poland’s largest telecoms operator,
had paid young film extras, who looked fashionable, to wait in line for several hours before the
stores opened, in order to attract attention and spread the word to pedestrians that stopped and
took interest in what was happening. (Phoney Queues Used to Spur Polish iPhone Launch,
2008) What could cause such a frenzy? After all, it was just a phone.

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This is where psychology comes into play. Edward Bernays, often cited as the ‘father of public
relations’ (Public Relations Through Time, 2012), and nephew of Sigmund Freud, wrote in his
1928 book ‘Propaganda’ that “…Modern propaganda is a consistent, enduring effort to create
or shape events to influence the relations of the public to an enterprise, idea or group… Events
and activities must be created in order to put ideas into circulation, in these channels, which
are as varied as the means of human communication.” (Bernays, 1928)
This line of thought is further expanded upon by Adam Curtis, in his BBC TV documentary
series called ‘The Century of the Self’, positing the idea that, in the present day, the business
world uses models developed by Bernays, building upon his uncle Sigmund’s earlier work, to
read into the secret unconscious desires of consumers, in order create and then fulfil their
fetishistic desires, by making products seem as pleasing as possible, so that they are seen as if
they were extensions of themselves and their personalities. (The Rise of the All-Consuming
Self and the Influence of the Freud Dynasty – from Sigmund to Matthew, 2002) (Adams, 2002)
Confirmation (if even needed) was put forward by Mittal (2006), who further developed the
idea that in order for products to become part of a purchaser’s extended self, these products
had to be able to enable the consumer to define their self-worth via the ownership of such
products in the first place, as well defining how these items are ‘embraced’ into a person’s
extended self. For example, the relatively high cost of purchasing an iPhone was not an issue
for early adopters, mainly because that high pricing point was used by the purchasers to show
off their ‘high end techno-social status’ (Arruda-Filho et al, 2010) – like a peacock showing
off its plumage as an advertisement that it is better than another rival peacock.

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B - Operating system
In 1985, Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, left the company due to board room politics and
intrigue. He launched NeXT – a computer company that would focus on providing high-end
workstations to businesses and the educational sector, with an emphasis on selling these
workstations to universities at a price point that was below competitors such as Apollo, Hewlett
Packard and Sun. (Hormby, 2012)
NeXT created their own operating system to run on these workstations – which was called
NeXTSTEP. NeXTSTEP was built as a UNIX like operating system, containing parts of both
the BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and Mach kernels. (NEXTSTEP Operating System,
2004) It was one of the earliest operating systems to use a GUI (graphical user interface) and
object orientated programming. (Rodriguez, 2015).
One of the principle designers was Avie Tevanian - he worked on Mach as part of his Ph.D.
thesis at Carnegie Mellon University, from where he was then recruited to work at NeXT as
Vice President of Software Engineering, later becoming Chief Software Technology Officer at
Apple - amongst many other high ranking and prestigious roles he would go on to hold in the
computing industry. (Former Apple Software Chief Avie Tevanian Joins Elevation Partners as
Managing Director, 2010).
When the Mach Kernel project was started, its stated goal was the creation of a microkernel
that could replace the BSD kernel (which was monolithic) – the thought process being that with
the use of a microkernel, as many separate services as possible are moved out of the kernel
space and into the user space, leaving the kernel as more of a message parsing service between
the different services, hardware, and its drivers, which would provide better security to the
services that are operating within the user space with lower privileges, thus additionally
strengthening kernel stability, so the services running in the user space could be separately
restarted without requiring an entire kernel restart. (Keuper, 2012)

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Due to the fact that, at the time of Tevanian’s recruitment, Mach was incomplete, and therefore
deficient, due to its lack of a network stack and a virtual file system, NeXT decided to take and
then merge these components instead from the BSD kernel, the downside being that because
the features copied from BSD were designed specifically to run in the kernel space, the
resulting kernel was thus a monolithic kernel rather than a micro kernel. (Keuper, 2012)
NeXT took 4 years to release version 1.0 of its NeXTSTEP operating system built upon this
hybrid kernel, and whilst its companion hardware, as well as the operating system, were hailed
at the time as revolutionary, NeXT struggled with sales and market share, eventually folding
its hardware division entirely to focus on porting its operating system to other platforms such
as x86-based PCs and Sun workstations. (Webster, 1994) Commercially NeXT had not been
successful, but a NeXT workstation and the NeXTSTEP operating system was used by Sir Tim
Berners-Lee to create the world wide web (Arthur, 2011), the very thing that years later was
part of the value proposition of owning an iPhone and being able to browse the web as you
would on a desktop computer.
In 1996, Apple was looking at replacement candidates for its aging ‘System 7’ desktop
operating system, despite the fact they had a dedicated team of 500 employees working on their
own in house solution, codenamed Copland, which was almost 2 years behind schedule.
(Hormby, 2013) When Steve Jobs became aware of Apple’s search he proposed NeXTSTEP
to executives at Apple, leading to Apple’s announcement in December 1996 that it was
purchasing NeXT, and would use NeXT and its software as the springboard for a new operating
system for the Macintosh. (Edwards, 2010)
Today, iOS and other current Apple operating systems (such as OS X) are derived from their
NeXTSTEP grandparents, and is again another example of cumulative selection at work. As
already discussed, NeXTSTEP itself was a hybrid combination of both BSD and Mach. The
kernel combination was called XNU (standing for X is Not Unix, even though it was!) and is
the fundamental basis for all Apple operating systems in use today. (Keuper, 2012)

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Figure 3 – NeXT / XNU kernel evolution from BSD/Mach from 1988 to 1997 (Singh, 2004)
At the lowest layer of the kernel is Mach, which is responsible for managing processor and
memory usage, offers protected memory, deals with scheduling and a provides messaging
between processes. Above this sits the BSD layer – this provides support for POSIX APIs and
threads, the BSD process model, UNIX security, file systems and networking (though not at
the hardware device level). (Kernel Architecture Overview, 2013)
The NeXTSTEP environment was comprised of four components which were the Windows
Server, Workspace Manager, Application Kit and the Interface Builder. (Thompson, 1989)
NeXTSTEP used the Objective-C programming language – still in use with both Mac desktops
running OS X and on Apple mobile devices that run iOS - there are even applications created

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for NeXTSTEP that have evolved into present day programs like Numbers (formerly
Parasheet), Keynote (formerly Concurrence) and Pages.(Foresman, 2012)
The Application Kit component contained a collection of pre-built objects that could be used
to build software for the NeXT workstation – many of these became part of what is now known
as the AppKit framework – which was used to reduce repetitive coding that is often part of the
development of applications, that Apple later transformed into Cocoa (on OS X) and Cocoa
Touch (on iOS). (Foresman, 2012)
There are in fact so many parts of NeXTSTEP that are still in use today on Apple’s current
operating systems to write about here, it could be a paper in itself. What can be stated, is that
it is quite possible that without their acquisition of NeXT, there would not be an Apple as it is
known of today. NeXTSTEP was clearly an operating system far ahead of its time when one
considers that almost 30 years after its initial release it is still at the heartbeat of some of the
most wildly successful hardware ever created.
So, how is all of this put together? As shown in figure 4, iOS is comprised of four abstraction
layers – the Core OS, Core services, Media and Cocoa Touch layers. The Core OS contains the
kernel (XNU – comprising of Mach and BSD) that has been previously discussed as well as
handling, inter alia, device drivers and power management (Core OS Layer, 2014). The Core
Services layer contains important system services that are utilised by applications – including
but not restricted to, access to features like location services, block objects (used for C and
Objective C coding), data encryption and application file sharing (Core Services Layer, 2014).
The Media layer is tasked with handling graphics, video and audio (Ahmad et al, 2013). Finally
Cocoa Touch contains the frameworks that are vital for creating and designing iOS applications
(Cocoa Touch Layer, 2014) as well as supporting multitouch events and controls. (Tarkoma
and Lagerspetz, 2011)

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Figure 4 – the four abstraction layers of iOS (How to relate UIKit, Core Image, Quartz 2D, and
the various frameworks in IOS? 2012)

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C - User Interface
It has been demonstrated that there is a solid foundation and basis (as well as ‘cumulative’
historical lineage) to the XNU kernel that is used by iOS. However, when the iPhone was
announced, touch screen devices were poorly designed and most of them required a stylus to
be used for effective operation, something that was highlighted during the iPhone keynote
speech made by Steve Jobs in 2007:
“… Nobody wants a stylus. So let’s not use a stylus.
We’re gonna use the best pointing device in the world. We’re gonna use a pointing device that
we’re all born with – we’re born with ten of them. We’re gonna use our fingers….” (Transcript
iPhone Keynote, 2007)
Thus, the touch gestures that are today ubiquitous were born, or were they? Whilst at the time
they were revelatory, the combination of hand gestures on a multi-touch surface had been
proposed by a PhD student called Wayne Westerman in his thesis entitled Hand Tracking,
Finger Identification, and Chordic Manipulation on a Multi-Touch Surface (1999). Westerman
had come up with the idea after he had developed carpal tunnel syndrome and wanted his
proposed technology to help others with hand disabilities. (Reyes, 2013)
Westerman and another colleague, John Elias, formed a company, named FingerWorks, to
market the technology to their target audience, which Apple then purchased in 2005, and a
significant proportion of Apple’s multi-touch patents that have been subsequently filed have
named Dr Westerman as the primary inventor. (Kim, 2009)

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Figure 5 - iPhone touch gestures (Smith, 2012)
So once a user has a way to directly interact with an iPhone without using traditional physical
keys or buttons, the user interface displayed had to make sense to a new user that would be
using such a device for the very first time. Steve Jobs was a keen proponent of skeuomorphism,
which is “An object or feature which imitates the design of a similar artefact made from another
material” (skeuomorph – definition of skeuomorph in English from the Oxford dictionary)
because “…it made software easier for normal people to use – more approachable and
immediately familiar” (Carlson, 2014). Thus, the icon for the calendar application looks like
what a real calendar would look like, the icon for the camera application looks like a camera
lens and so on and so forth.
By 2010, it had become increasingly critical for a mobile device to provide a positive user
experience (Tarkoma and Lagerspetz, 2011) and whilst the combination of the old
(skeuomorphism) and the new (touchscreen) was a successful blend, competitors such as
Windows Phone had upgraded their user interface to have a much stronger emphasis on the
user experience thanks to its modern interface and clean looks. (Tarkoma and Lagerspetz,
2011)
Apple decided to revamp the user interface in use on the iPhone, tasking their Chief Design
Officer, Sir Jonny Ive, with the overhaul. Ive, having already successfully designed products
like the iconic iMac (Kosner, 2013) decided that now that smartphone users were used to using

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touchscreen devices, the familiarity of skeuomorphism was no longer an important facet of the
user interface. (Hein, 2013)
Sir Jonny, as well as his mentor Steve Jobs, were followers of Dieter Rams, an industrial
engineer that worked for Braun designing products that later inspired many Apple products
like the iPod and the iMac. (Jaroslaw, 2014) Rams had formed what became known as the ‘Ten
Principles of Good Design’ (Good design | About Vitsoe) – as shown in figure 6
Figure 6 – Dieter Ram’s Ten 10 Principles of Good Design (Weinlick, 2014)
These ten principles inspired the overhaul of UI for iOS 7, and the move away from what was
becoming the dated original user interface for the iPhone. A comparison between the two is
shown in figure 7.

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Figure 7 – a comparison of iOS 6 and iOS 7 homescreens (Comparison of the iPhone’s home
screen on iOS 7 v/s iOS 6 – Newlaunches, 2013)

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D - Hardware
The idea of convergence has previously been alluded to. However, true and ground-breaking
convergence had not been possible prior to the iPhone’s release due to hardware impediments,
even though ill-fated attempts had been made with such devices as Nokia’s 9000 and IBM’s
SIMON as far back as 1997 and 1992 respectively. At that time, both the device makers and
the intended users of the devices did not fully appreciate or understand what the devices were
expected to deliver, (West and Mace, 2010) and these products were failures.
When Apple released the iPhone it was patently obvious that the hardware was superior to its
contemporary competition. To start with, it had a modern and futuristic look, with a minimal
amount of hardware buttons – almost everything was controlled by using the touchscreen. Most
touchscreen devices of the time required a stylus to navigate through menus and screens on
applications. Using a stylus presented many problems, especially the fact they were easy to
lose, not difficult to break and needed to have a secure housing within the device for the stylus
to be stored. (Lee et al, 1985)
The touchscreen was not only important in terms of what it could do from a hardware
perspective, it extended beyond that – being able to use a touch screen iPhone in a store pre-
purchase also allowed the consumer to gain ‘prior knowledge’ by becoming familiar with how
it is used, as well as then enabling the propagation of that information to their peers thanks to
their positive tactile experiences with the device, creating a ‘positive hedonic contagion’ (Filho
et al, 2010).
Apple’s main smartphone competitor, at the time of the iPhone’s release, was Research In
Motion’s BlackBerry smartphone family. These devices had hardware keyboards, whereas the
iPhone provided its on demand, on screen touch keyboard for users to type upon. This meant
that when the keyboard was not required, the available screen real estate was much larger
versus a comparable sized BlackBerry – making it a perfect web browsing device and ideal for
watching videos.

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Another vital improvement over the competition was on-board storage, as well as Wi-Fi
connectivity. The BlackBerry Curve 8300, released in May 2007, had no Wi-Fi and a meagre
64MB of storage – although this could be expanded up to 4GB with a microSD card
(BlackBerry Curve 8300 – Full phone specifications). In comparison, the original iPhone came
with Wi-Fi and either 4GB or 8GB storage on board, with the 4GB model replaced by a 16GB
model in September 2007. (Apple iPhone (Original/1st Gen/EDGE) 4, 8, 16GB Specs) The
availability of much more storage allowed users to store (and of course later retrieve) their
music, photographs and videos on the iPhone, in a way that had previously not been possible.
Whilst many other smartphones offered a simple point and shoot camera, the iPhone, in its
many iterations, was to become the world’s most popular camera (Hall, 2015). Starting out
with a far from inspiring 2 megapixel lens and unable to record video, the current iPhone at the
time of writing, has a 12 megapixel lens that can also record 4K video. (Heisler, 2015) The
iPhone as a camera, is a phenomenon that has not abated despite strong competition from others
with, on paper at least, better lenses.
The theme of cumulative selection, and incremental improvement runs throughout this paper,
and the hardware of the various iPhones that have been released all incrementally improve over
the generation they have replaced, subtly adding additional features, improved hardware in
terms of screens, connectivity and the camera lenses. (Heisler, 2013) (Fleishman, 2013) This
can be well seen in figure 8 which compares the first six iPhone models.
These incremental changes has led to the iPhone becoming a convergence device in just the
way that was envisaged by Koji Kobayashi – probably being responsible for the killing off of
entire standalone market segments for GPS/Sat Nav devices, point and shoot cameras as well
as even Apple’s own iPod.

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Figure 8 – a comparison of the first six iPhone models, to better show the incremental
improvements made (iPhone Evolution, 2012)

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E - The App Store
Now that customers had purchased an iPhone, there had to be a substantive reason for them to
continue owning one, as well for others to be convinced to go out and buy one. Funk (2011)
argues that for there to be the materialisation of a substantial amount of mobile phone users it
is dependent on those users being offered both well-suited content and applications, even when
they were actually not part of the consumer’s initial expectations. This would allow for the
iPhone’s functionality to be extended past that of what was its contemporary competition.
(Watkins and Walter, 2009)
Enter the App Store, announced by Apple on 6 March 2008 (Miller, 2008). The App Store
would allow third party developers to create applications that went beyond the scope of the
built-in Apple created software and plug the missing gaps in functionality. At the same time as
the announcement, a software developer’s kit was made available by Apple that enabled
anyone to create an application for the iPhone (Block, 2008) – the response was nothing short
of staggering. Apple’s tagline “There’s an App for That” (Van Grove, 2010) led to a surge of
applications being created, the idea being that there will likely be an app that could do anything
a user could imagine when they search the App Store.
As pointed out in the beginning of this section, Apple were looking to create substantive
reasons to convince new customers to buy an iPhone. Yoon et al (2010) put forward the idea
that Apple’s main purpose behind the creation of the App Store was to drive sales of the iPhone
via the sale of applications and their contents. Apple would be able to sell more phones due to
the substantial number of third party applications created, without even having to invest a
penny. (Watkins and Walter, 2009)
Further to that, is that the App Store model also removed the age old problem of ‘uncertainty
of demand’ – meaning that there is no stock to hold that might lose value or relevance. The
onus is thus on the app developer to create an application that might become popular, not on
Apple.

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Prior to the launch of the App Store there were no other applications available beyond the ones
preloaded with the device. Mitchener (2009), had put forward the argument that once users
became accustomed to using their new device and its touch user interface “…it is the App Store
that will (then) allow users to personalise their iPhone’s capabilities…”
Even if the idea of the App Store may have appeared to be new in 2008, it actually was not. In
the winter of 1992, software with limited functionality, was released on a quarterly CD-ROM
catalogue for NeXT computers - which was called the ‘Electronic AppWrapper’. (Wyatt, 1994)
Users then had the opportunity to test the software, and if they wished to purchase the full
version they would press a buy button that would send an automated email from the CD-ROM
with their credit card details, and receive an unlock key in return that would enable the full
functionality of the program. (Carey, 2015)
However, such a delivery method used by the Electronic AppWrapper can be regarded as old
hat. Traditionally, these kinds of methods were time consuming and with the case of mobile
devices would often require a user to first download the application on a desktop PC, transfer
it to their device with a cable, and only then actually install the software – instead applications
can be sought out on the device itself, and subsequently downloaded and installed at the touch
of a button – much faster, and with greater ease. (Want, 2010)
On 10 July 2008, the App Store went live when Apple pushed out an update to the iPhone’s
iOS operating system. The early, free of charge, most downloaded applications centred around
social media or chatting – specifically AIM, Facebook and MySpace, whereas the paid for
bestselling apps were mainly games – Super Monkey Ball outselling its nearest competition by
a factor of three to one. (Arrington, 2008) Some developers looked at ways that apps could
harness the new and exciting features of the iPhone 3G – like iPint, downloaded 6 million times
between July and October 2008 alone, which used the iPhone 3G’s addition of an
accelerometer. (Wrenn, 2008) – see figure 9

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Figure 9 – the iPint app in action (Wrenn, 2008)
Within a few months, the competition followed Apple’s lead. Google announced their Android
response, which was then called the Android Market (Shankland, 2008) and Research In
Motion followed suit shortly thereafter with the announcement of their intention to launch their
very own BlackBerry App World store (Perez, 2008). There can be no coincidence – these
were both launched to counter the giant step forward that Apple had taken.
The App store made Apple a facilitator, providing millions of their customers with the ability
to use/purchase applications created by programmers the world over, in their very own
marketplace that they controlled – benefiting all concerned – Apple, the programmers and the
paying customers (Wicker, 2013).

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According to Seraj and Wong (2014), on a mobile screen with reduced real estate compared to
larger devices, a well-designed application should ideally consider how fast a user can read the
content that is on the screen whilst attempting to reduce the number of touches or number of
attempts to scroll on a given app screen, as well as consistency of where the buttons are located
on each app page.
In a most thorough and in depth study carried out over twelve months (Rahmati et al, 2012) it
was discovered that 62% of apps installed by users on their iPhones were subsequently
uninstalled, indicating that users liked to try out apps that they later decide they dislike and
then remove. The same study also showed that a small number of apps form a major proportion
of the participants usage – roughly 90% of all app usage comes from the top 10 most used, of
which 40% is from the most used application. This trend is similarly reflected in terms of web
sites that are browsed.
The same study also significantly informs that paid apps tend to have a shorter lifespan on their
users handset, as often the user quickly establishes that they dislike the app they have paid for
and would then uninstall it, having lost money in doing so.
According to research performed by Gartner Inc. in September 2013 (Lunden, 2013), the vast
majority of application downloads (91 percent or 83 billion downloads) were for free of charge
applications. The same Gartner research pointed to the likelihood that by 2017, paid for
applications will be eclipsed in revenue by freemium applications. The freemium approach
allows for the user to download the app free of charge with limited functionality or perhaps
with full functionality but for a limited time frame – with an in-app purchase unlocking the
restricted content (Monetize Freemium Apps).
The previous paragraph has demonstrated that sales of freemium apps will soon overtake the
sales of standard paid for apps. Interestingly, this situation was foreseen by Esther Dyson, in
an article she wrote for Wired Magazine in July 1995 “While not all content will be free, the
new economic dynamic will operate as if it were... content (including software) will serve as
advertising for services such as support, aggregation, filtering, assembly and integration of

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content modules…The likely best course for content providers is to exploit that situation, to
distribute intellectual property free in order to sell services and relationships. The provider's
vital task is to figure out what to charge for and what to give away - all in the context of what
other providers are doing and what customers (will grow to) expect.” (Dyson, 1995)
Paid for and unlocked freemium apps are an investment beyond the cost of a smartphone and
a network data plan. Once paid for, the user is generally entitled to receive updates to these
applications until such time as the developer stops updating them. This introduces the concept
of ‘ecosystem lock-in’ (Hoffmann, 2012). Once locked-in by such methods, the likelihood is
that the user will continue to either use their existing device or purchase another one from the
same manufacturer to avoid re-investing to get their apps on another platform. Apple is one
such example of this concept successfully being executed.
As of July 2015, Apple’s App Store contains 1.5 million apps (Number of apps available in
leading app stores as of July 2015, 2015), and has a cumulative number of downloads that is
estimated to be 100 billion (Cumulative number of apps downloaded from the Apple App Store
from July 2008 to June 2015 (in billions), 2015). It can safely be assumed that the App Store
has been a resounding success.

Page | 29
Conclusion
Successful products need to stand out and be different to the rest of the competition in order to
win business, gain market share and then retain that share – Apple was primed for the
iPhone/smartphone explosion because they already had an extendable platform in place (the
iTunes store) that allowed for the subsequent launch of the App Store (Watkins and Walter,
2009), and because their device was unique in a mobile phone market saturated with boring
and uninspired devices. It has also been argued (Diduck, 2011) that the iPhone took existing
markets, like phones, email, web browsing and the iTunes store and bundled them together as
an effective package, when others up to that point had not.
The aforementioned markets, fused together, led to many stabs at creating a crossover device,
with Research In Motion’s BlackBerry handsets being the flag-bearer of the time (Curran and
Leker, 2009). Whilst BlackBerry did a great job of fusing a phone with messaging capabilities
(email, BBM etc.) it lacked the desktop web browsing experience that made the iPhone the
smash hit that it was. By the time Research In Motion released a touchscreen device, Apple
had already moved forward again with the launch of the App Store – keeping the competition
at bay and forcing them to play catch-up and announce their own application storefronts.
It has been discussed how the effective use of publicity gave Apple the propulsion and
momentum driven start that they needed when the iPhone was released, using the techniques
developed by Edward Bernays. However, if the product was not built using best industrial
design practices that were pioneered by Dieter Rams it would not have elicited the unilaterally
positive response in consumers, in that they had to obtain one for themselves.
The App Store made owning an iPhone even more worthwhile, and better assisted Apple’s
ability to lock-in consumers to their ecosystem, thereby increasing the likelihood that they
would buy more iPhones in the future, evangelise the iPhone to those that did not own one and
also be more likely to buy other Apple products – for example iPads, MacBooks or iPads.
Thanks to the proliferation of 1.5 million available apps on the App Store, users have realised
that owning an iPhone is a gateway to almost every imaginable usage scenario of their
smartphone possible. One does not need to carry a separate camera, music player or navigation
system when leaving their home in the morning – they are already carrying a device that can

Page | 30
do all of that and even more. One such example is the ability, today, to use an iPhone as a
secure credit card terminal. (Angeles, 2015)
The well-designed user interface – most deliberately thought out, with its proliferation of
skeuomorphs so that the unfamiliar became familiar, and its later Sir Jonny Ive driven
subsequent facelift, enabled the smooth operation of the world’s first real breakthrough mass
production touch screen device - built on technology and ideas that Apple had acquired along
the way – but could never have been executed by their initial creators, for example Dr Wayne
Westerman, in the way that Apple had executed them.
All of this was built upon an operating system kernel initially released in 1989, by NeXT, who
despite failing to be a profitable business, in part possibly due to the NeXTSTEP operating
system being too far ahead of its time, has been shown to be the foundation upon which all
Apple products today are built upon. Without the NeXTSTEP operating system there would
not be the iOS operating system as we know it today, nor would there be the App Store as we
know it today – thanks to its precursor the Electronic AppWrapper.
Along the way there have been several visionaries who have foreseen what was to come –
people like Koji Kobayashi, who predicted the convergence of technology and telephony, and
Esther Dyson, who foresaw the rise in free and freemium content. The ideas executed by Steve
Jobs during his time at NeXT ultimately led to making billions of dollars for Apple and their
shareholders. These unique characters have all contributed to the rise of the smartphone. No
doubt, in the future there will be others who will be able to presage what is yet to come.
Today, Apple finds itself as the world’s most valuable company – more valuable than Coca
Cola, McDonalds and Marlboro combined (Richter, 2015). All of this is built upon the iPhone,
which is responsible for 69 per cent of Apple’s revenue (Richter, 2015). Of course, nothing can
last forever, but with the lay of the land being as it is at the time of writing, this is unlikely to
change in the near future.
In the opinion of this author, the iPhone has been a revolutionary device, and until such time
as another revolutionary device, brought upon by cumulative selection and all that has come
before, comes in to play, Apple’s profitable reign at the vanguard of the smartphone revolution
is therefore set to continue for the foreseeable future.

Page | 31
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