June 3, 2011: iOS overtakes Research in Motion’s BlackBerry operating system for the first time.
While Android remains comfortably in the lead in terms of market share, the news marks the beginning of the end for BlackBerry as a smartphone powerhouse.
It's hard to believe how quickly the mobile landscaped morphed over the past decade. Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
December 17, 2009: Apple finally triumphs over longtime rival Microsoft … on mobile operating systems market share.
Figures released by research firm Comscore show that iPhone OS (as iOS is called at the time) surpasses Windows Mobile in the United States. At the time, roughly 36 million Americans own smartphones. Of these, a quarter run Apple’s mobile operating system.
Apple will be at a $4 trillion marker capitalization before you know it. Here’s why. Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac
Two monumental events happened this week. Apple became the first U.S. company to be worth an astonishing $3 trillion. And a day later came the official end of BlackBerry — a series of phones that once dominated the market.
The collapse of BlackBerry is proof that today’s winners aren‘t inevitably tomorrow’s. While in the coming years Apple could become the first company to reach $4 trillion, it also could start down a path that ends in failure.
Here’s some of what Apple will do so it doesn’t end up like BlackBerry.
It's very rare, but smartphones can catch fire. They aren't known to explode powerfully enough to kill someone, though. Photo: Langley Township Fire Department
A Malaysian man perished in a fire in his bedroom, but his family and his company say he was actually killed when the phone charging near his bed exploded.
“He had two phones, one Blackberry and a Huawei. We don’t know which one exploded,” said the brother-in-law of Nazrin Hassan, the CEO of a venture capital fund.
iPhone X didn't come out early enough to give Apple a sales boost. Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
The world may have passed its peak smartphone moment last year.
Smartphone sales data released today from the number crunchers at Gartner revealed that worldwide smartphone sales declined for the first time ever during the last quarter of 2017. Both Apple and Samsung saw their market share decline just slightly, but good news could be on the horizon.
iPhone 8 rumors haven't had an impact yet, either. Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
It might be the most successful smartphone on the planet, but the iPhone didn’t become what it is today without some failures along the way.
Even before the device made its much-anticipated debut in 2007, Apple overcame big missteps and mistakes. It tried putting iTunes on other phones. It believed we didn’t need native apps. It entered into embarrassing partnerships with big bands.
As Cult of Mac looks back over the iPhone’s history to celebrate the device’s 10th anniversary, in collaboration with Wired UK, 10 big failures stick out like a sore thumb.
They must have been holding their crystal balls wrong. Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
Predicting the future is tough, even for the experts. That’s the only lesson we can learn from looking back at these horribly misguided iPhone predictions that greeted the device at its launch 10 years ago.
Before most people had even wrapped their fingers around Apple’s first-gen smartphone, tech pundits, analysts and competing CEOs were already writing off the iPhone as a disaster similar to Apple’s previous excursions into video game consoles and the like.
Here are just a few of the laughable reactions that greeted the iPhone in 2007.
people are switching from Android to iPhone than before. Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
If you thought people were getting tired of the iPhone, think again.
Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) released a new report today, suggesting that the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus launch marks an uptick in switchover of Android users over to Apple.
The rotting corpse of Blackberry Ltd. may provide the extra juice needed to get Apple’s car project rolling.
Apple has reportedly poached key engineers from BlackBerry’s QNX team in Canada to help develop the operating system for its self-driving car. And the iPhone-maker has set up shop just five-minutes away from the QNX offices.