Apple started work on the iPhone in 2004, codenamed Project Purple at the time.
There have been plenty of insider based histories, and they all agree on the basic timeline. Apple might have started thinking about doing a phone in 2004, but they didn't really get going seriously until 2005.
Heck, in mid 2005, Apple was still using iPods as phone UI mules (experimental phone UI tests using the trackwheel). That's also about the time they approached Verizon, but obviously with nothing to show them, Big Red had little interest.
It wasn't until towards the end of 2005 that Apple decided to go with a touch system and to not use Linux. The hardware design really began around Thanksgiving of 2005, and the OSX port that became iOS started at the beginning of 2006.
That's why I give them credit for only taking about a year from the time that the final Purple 2 project began.
It's also silly to dismiss Apple because they didn't create a phone earlier. They entered the market and changed it for the better. I think that's fairly significant.
Oh, definitely they had an impact. As I pointed out, very few paid paid attention to existing multi-touch smartphone ideas until Apple went public.
I love that Apple did what they did. After all, as someone who had 15 years of touch and handheld experience before the iPhone was revealed, it made my skills even more valuable and sought after.
What legacy UI and hardware stopped manufacturers from creating a new platform and moving forward? LG had the basic hardware together in the Prada but couldn't execute. What was stopping anyone else from doing it properly?
It's all about where your customer base is, and what technology you had to support (or thought you had to support).
First, bear in mind that smartphone customers were overwhelmingly enterprise users at the time.
As for hardware, smartphones had kind of settled on 240x320 color screens by 2001. For years after, manufacturers not only had to support enterprise apps of that old resolution, but also the ability to use a stylus, and to allow non-touch variations with cursor pads.
Everyone falls prey to legacy support. Look at Apple, who had to resort to pixel doubling, and simple screen lengthening.
Google even scrapped some of their plans and reworked Android when the iPhone was announced. They were less tied down than any other manufacturer yet the iPhone and its abilities still took them by surprise.
Because of Google's desire to prevent Bing from becoming a mobile standard, Android was aimed at Windows Mobile, which had both touch and non-touch versions. It made sense to start with the one they had a dev unit for, but they were already doing both.
As well, Apple helped break the hold where the carrier was the gatekeeper of everything related to your phone. That's pretty great, I think.
Perhap you're thinking of dumb phones.
Carriers were never gatekeepers of smartphone applications like Apple is. You could install any app you wanted. Apple created a walled garden where there was none before.
Then we were held hostage by AT&T's bandwidth limitations for years, while Apple bent over to whatever AT&T wanted to be WiFi only.
Some people think not having a carrier label or built-in app is terrific. Since I always use a case, the label doesn't bother me. And with Android the bloatware is kept in the app drawer, rarely seen.
