Isn’t it amazing how one single product can either dent or shape an industry? A couple of decades ago nobody conceived of the idea of having a computer at home until Apple and Microsoft focused on giving us what we still didn’t know we needed. The same could be said about Personal Digital Assistants, that took years to become popular, until Palm figured-out the right formula for success. Digital music struggled for years until Apple gave us the iPod, and before 2007, smartphones were a niche for business people.

Love it or hate it, the iPhone has changed the way we see smartphones in a dramatic way. Before 2007, smartphones were simply PDAs merged with phone capabilities, but their real purpose was to give business users a smarter means of communication. Surely you could consume content in them, but since their focus was to serve people that were always busy, those features always took a back seat. The iPhone was the first smartphone made for consumers, where consuming content like music, videos and the Internet were its primary focus.

Back then lot’s of us thought that Apple was crazy launching this iPhone since it was dramatically different to everything a successful market already sold. It was a very bold move that most of Apple’s competitors ignored or looked down upon in the early days, but which proved to be the secret sauce that pushed smartphones out from being a niche, to a mainstream product.

Fast-forward seven years, and the smartphone industry is a very different animal today. It’s time we pay tribute to the smartphone that started it all, Apple’s 1st-generation iPhone. Make sure you grab some popcorn, your favorite drink, and join us to remember how it all got started. Make sure you also leave your thoughts or comments on this phone down bellow.