Steve Jobs
Apple began work on the first iPhone in 2005 and the first iPhone was released on June 29, 2007. The iPhone created such a sensation that a survey indicated six out of ten Americans were aware of its release. "Time" declared it "Invention of the Year" for 2007. The completed iPhone had multimedia capabilities and functioned as a quad-band touch screen smartphone. A year later, the iPhone 3G was released in July 2008 with three key features: support for GPS, 3G data and tri-band UMTS/HSDPA. In June 2009, the iPhone 3GS, whose improvements included voice control, a better camera, and a faster processor, was introduced by Phil Schiller. The iPhone 4 is thinner than previous models, has a five megapixel camera capable of recording video in 720p HD, and adds a secondary front-facing camera for video calls. A major feature of the iPhone 4S, introduced in October 2011, was Siri, a virtual assistant capable of voice recognition.
App store
Apple released iPhone OS 2.0 in July 2008 for the iPhone, together with the App Store, officially introducing third-party app development and distribution to the platform. The service allows users to purchase and download new apps for their device through either the App Store on the device, or through the iTunes Store on the iTunes desktop software. While Apple has been criticized by some for how it operates the App Store, it has been a major financial success for the company. The popularity of Apple's App Store led to the rise of the generic term "app store", as well as the introduction of equivalent marketplaces by competing mobile operating systems: the Android Market (later renamed to Google Play) launched alongside the release of the first Android smartphone (the HTC Dream) in September 2008, BlackBerry's App World launched in April 2009, as well as Nokia's Ovi Store and Microsoft's Windows Marketplace for Mobile both launching that year too.