That&#x27;s not how it happened. It did sell respectably well the first year it was released, but that was only as far as smartphone sales went back then, which was a very small market. It was still had only a small share of the smartphone industry, primarily because the pricing meant very few people could afford it. I had the original iPhone and I was the only person in my entire direct and extended social circle that had one, and that too only because my employer bought it for me. I remember looks of envy from strangers wherever I took it out. The sales numbers from that time bear this out.<p>But then a year later AT&amp;T started subsidizing the iPhone 3G in exchange for a two year contract, and <i>that&#x27;s</i> when sales really took off. You can clearly see the uptick in July 2008 when that happened:
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Mobile_operating_system#&#x2F;media&#x2F;File:World_Wide_Smartphone_Sales_Share.png" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Mobile_operating_system#&#x2F;media...</a><p><i>That</i> is what changed the mobile phone industry. It created a whole new market: the consumer smartphone market. Previously it was only really affordable for two markets: enterprise buyers and rich people. With this new model, <i>everyone</i> could afford a smartphone. Now I don&#x27;t have any proof of this, but my hunch is Jobs convinced AT&amp;T to go with this business model. If true, his true genius when it came to the iPhone was not really in making a really nice device, but in creating a whole new market for it.