It's not the phone!

It's not the phone!
Photo by Vojtech Bruzek / Unsplash

Of all the tiring inspirational videos you find on Linkedin, Steve Jobs‘ Phone unveiling is probably one of the most tired by now (‘not three devices…’). The iPhone video, though, that not many shares are this one. The one where Jobs unveil the true groundbreaking innovation of the iPhone: the AppStore.

It’s easy to forget the costs of being a licensed developer before this business model disruption. The 30% Apple’s cut now judged as such a heavy tax was quite a bargain in 2008.

This was genuinely the birth of the platform economy where a closed technological garden will provide not only tools for developers (SDK), but a cloud backend, a commercial front, and a direct link to millions of customers with integrated payments (‘we take care of everything…’).

If the iPhone was anything but an unprecedented design achievement, the true revolution was about the business model.