People keep rewriting the iPhone’s story and keep forgetting that:
It wasn’t the phone.
It wasn’t the brand.
It wasn’t the technology.
What made it successful are cell phone carriers, who desperately needed a vessel to sell data.
Before 2007/08, they had a really hard time selling mobile data as we were all on free WiFi, laughing, buying devices when we needed them.
So phone carriers bought iPhones in bulks at whatever price Apple had for them, subsidizing the crazy upfront cost. They bundled them with LTE data plans to see if that would work.
..Baaang!
What made the iPhone successful is a partnership between companies and a giant opportunity. Not a brand, not a marketing person, not a device. Collaboration did it.
It’s always collaboration that gets shit done. Always.