History of iPhone

The history of the iPhone began with a request from inventor Steve Jobs to Apple Inc.'s engineers, asking them to investigate the use of touchscreen devices and a tablet computer, which later came to fruition with the iPad. Many have noted the device's similarities to Apple's previous touch-screen portable device, the Newton MessagePad. Like the Newton, the iPhone is nearly all screen. Its form factor is credited to Apple's Chief Design Officer, Jonathan Ive.

In April 2003 at the "All Things Digital" executive conference, Jobs expressed his belief that tablet PCs and traditional PDAs were not good choices as high-demand markets for Apple to enter, despite many requests made to him that Apple created another PDA. He believed that cell phones were going to become important devices for portable information access and that mobile phones needed to have excellent synchronization software. At that time, instead of focusing on a follow-up to their Newton PDA, Jobs had Apple focus on the iPod, and the iTunes software (which can be used to synchronize content with iPod devices), released January 2001. On September 7, 2005, Apple and Motorola released the ROKR E1, the first mobile phone to use iTunes. Jobs was unhappy with the ROKR, feeling that having to compromise with a non-Apple designer (Motorola) prevented Apple from designing the phone they wanted to make. In September 2006, Apple discontinued support for the ROKR and released a version of iTunes that included references to an as-yet unknown mobile phone that could display pictures and video. Ed Zander (Motorola CEO at the time) "inspired" Steve Jobs with Moto's multimedia (e.g., iTunes) + smartphone product concept. As a result, Apple gained a new product concept which was named "iPhone" while Motorola ironically walked away with a limited version of iTunes for Rokr/Slvr.

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