Smartphone revolution blazes on as iPhone turns 10

I still chuckle when I recall Docomo and AU truningnfpdiwn Apple and saying their product would not thrive in Japan and the garakei was enough. Haha. SoftBank was smart enough to take them on. Within a year Docomo was trying to find a way to sue SoftBank so they could not be the only company selling iPhones, since Docomo lost a huge percentage of their customer base.

I remember around 2005 seeing iTouch on trains and thinking if they would just add phone capability to them they'd be awesome. They did and the rest as you know is history.

Speed: I remember that, too. Looked at my original iPod the first time I saw Touch and said, "Otsukaresama".

I remember when Apple was talking about possibly combining a phone and an mp3 player tougher a lot of people shrugged at the idea at first. A lot of people were saying that if you have a system that can play music and also use it as a phone is not practical. What happens if something breaks? And it got worse once they decided to add a camera to the phone, everyone was like, "naw, I'll pass on that and get a separate camera." Well, 10 years later, camera sales are down, Tower Records and Virgin stores are out of business (who could have ever imagined) the iPhone 7 plus has one of the sharpest cameras, slim can hold 256 GB, you can use Apple pay, make very high quality movies, millions of apps and there's nothing that can come close to it. Yes, the iPhone has come a very long way, but now, can't imagine going back to a separate anything.

I think we've hit peak Iphone and their share of the market is only going to go down. They won't effectively vanish like Nokia or Blackberry, who messed up as spectacularly as any of the Japanese firms, but most good things about smartphones now are not limited to iOS (bluetooth audio and chromecast vs. airplay etc.) and can be had much cheaper with other handsets. The move to SIM free phones also means there is less reason to have an Iphone. Before you would get one "free" as part of an expensive contract.

Ditching the earphone socket and using Lightning, a format with poor durability and a huge known issue for cables breaking (next up will be headphone cables), will not help their situation.

I remember using a SONY NX-80 PDA with WI-FI and thinking that SONY would very soon introduce their own smartphone, which they soon did, with Android OS. And I remember iphone users bragging about how many apps were available for them. And now we see that the global smartphone market share by OS is 80%+ Android. And, FINALLY, apple has introduced a water-resistant model(a full six years after most others).

Smithinjapan & speed,

You guys are right. If I don't mistake I think there was touch technology here even in the 90s in Sushi shops. Another thing apart from introducing smartphones earlier, Jcompanies missed contract manufacturing.

To a lot of iPhone 6 users, the iPhone 7 is not the iPhone they asked for, so they're skipping

I went from 6 to 7 - overall I'm pretty happy with the upgrade. That said, if it's going to put someone out financially and/or they don't have a specific feature that they're wanting, then it may be better to wait for the 8.

Yep, that's why there's adoption dip from 6 to 7