Ten Years ago the iPhone Changed my Life

Yesterday, June 29, 2017 marked the ten-year anniversary of the release of the original iPhone. I remember that day like it was just hours ago. It was the day that changed the course of my life and actually the lives of billions of people.

Our company, Open Interface North America, Inc., supplied the Bluetooth software for all OS devices for OS products, and as far as I know, is still in use today. That day was a major milestone because in spite of the iPhone’s announcement in early January 2007, we were still legally bound by secrecy and few knew of our involvement with Apple. It wasn’t until June 29th that people could go to the licensing page and see our name on the device for themselves. It’s still there today.

People already forget that the original iPhone was released with mono audio and no applications outside of what Apple provided on the phone. While it was revolutionary at the time, we easily forget how much the phone has improved over the years. It’s also easy to forget how many problems the phone had to overcome to become a success. There were iterations of the phone over the last ten years that made it worse. One release had a bad antenna, another had a plastic case that easily cracked. Then there was the phone that some claimed would easily bend while the original phones did a terrible job of just holding a connection without an external antenna.

It was the release of the iPhone that put the wheels in motion for Qualcomm to acquire us before the end of the year. I believe the iPhone was a contributing factor to our sale. It was an exciting yet terrifying time for a small Bluetooth software company.

On the morning of the iPhone’s release, we dispatched as many employees as we could to Apple stores around the Seattle area to buy phones. We were there before 6 AM and brought in outdoor chairs and had a great time waiting for the stores to open. The time flew by. We could only buy two phones per person, and only until they ran out, so it took a lot of employees if you include those who were buying phones for themselves. In total, we bought about sixteen or seventeen phones for the company on that first day before they ran out with many employees buying their own.

Days later, we were in Tokyo showing our customers and minority shareholders the new phones for the first time. We took our phones to the Tokyo Apple store where they were also seeing the phones for the first time in real life. The whole experience and excitement was something I’ll never forget.

Buying a phone and connecting to our only carrier, AT&T, was not a smooth experience. Some were on hold for hours, and some couldn’t get setup for days. It was all a real mess at first and not like the smooth release of today.

After we had our phones in our hands, we all felt a tremendous sense of relief after several years of discussions, negotiations, agreements, and secret meetings with Apple. It was nerve-racking because it was such a big company secret and Apple at the time had no problem kicking out suppliers who violated their confidentiality agreements. We also knew there was a chance they would switch software providers and not tell us until the phone was in our hands and that would have been a big disappointment. Having that verification on the handset was a giant relief.

The iPhone wasn’t looking like it was going to make us a financial success because even their own estimates were modest at the time, especially when compared to the existing handset giants at the time. They were not our largest customer by a long shot, yet we treated them like we did every other customer; with the utmost care.

The months leading up to the release was an exciting time because it was going to be such a unique device and unlike anything on the market at the time. None of us knew what it would look like until January 2007 when the phone was announced.

When the phone was finally released, all of Apple’s competitors were publically laughing off the threat; some claiming that consumers would never use a phone that didn’t have physical keys. All of these, “handset experts” are now a fraction of their size. RIM is about gone, Palm is gone, Motorola is gone, LG, Samsung, lost their dominance, and the entire industry shifted directions.

None of us could have predicted that just ten years later, the iPhone would dominate the handset industry. Like so many things, knowing what events would mark key shifts in my life would be hard to identify at the time. It’s only ten years later that I realize how significant that day was for me ten years ago.