The history of iPhone began with a request from inventor Steve Jobs to Apple Inc.'s engineers, asking them to investigate the use of touchscreen devices and tablet computers (which later came to fruition with the iPad).[1][2][3][4] Many have noted the device's similarities to Apple's previous touch-screen portable device, the Newton MessagePad.[5][6][7][8] Like the Newton, the iPhone is nearly all screen. Its form factor is credited to Apple's Chief Design Officer, Jonathan Ive.[3][9]
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 receiving many requests for Apple to create 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. Jobs also had Apple the iTunes software, which can be used to synchronize content with iPod devices. iTunes was released in January 2001.[10][11][12][13] 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.[14] 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.[15] Ed Zander (the CEO of Motorola at the time) "inspired"[clarify] Steve Jobs with Moto's[clarify] multimedia (e.g., iTunes) + smartphone product concept.[clarify] As a result, Apple gained a new product concept, called "iPhone", while Motorola walked away[clarify] with a limited version of iTunes for Rokr/Slvr.
On January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs announced iPhone at the Macworld convention, receiving substantial media attention.[16] Jobs announced that the first iPhone would be released later that year. On June 29, 2007, the first iPhone was released.
On June 11, 2007, Apple announced at the Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference that the iPhone would support third-party applications using the Safari engine. Third parties would be able to create Web 2.0 applications, which users could access via the internet.[17] Such applications appeared even before the release of the iPhone; the first of these, called OneTrip, was a program meant to keep track of users' shopping lists.[18] On June 29, 2007, Apple released version 7.3 of iTunes to coincide with the release of iPhone.[19] This release contains support for iPhone service activation and syncing.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the iPhone is manufactured on contract[clarify] in the Shenzhen factory of the Taiwanese company Hon Hai (also known as Foxconn).[20] Also, according to recent news, Apple will shortly begin outsourcing the manufacturing of iPhones.[21]