Looking back on the 2007 technology world, only a few things stand out. The most prominent companies were Apple and Google; the most remarked-on development was the explosive growth of Facebook; and the biggest surprise was that the European Court of First Instance upheld the EU’s anti-competitive ruling against Microsoft.Apple’s share price is up nearly 135 per cent, compared with Google at only 52 per cent and a Nasdaq index up by a measly 12 per cent. In 2007, the company took on an industry it had hitherto spurned – the mobile phone business – and launched the iPhone, arrogantly announcing that it aimed to sell 10 million in the first year; it has already sold five million.The Apple phone is what corporate strategists call a ‘game-changer’. It’s really a powerful Unix computer in a tiny, sleek package. It happens to make voice calls, but in a way that’s the boring bit. More interesting is its wi-fi capabilities and the way it makes web browsing feasible on a small screen. Its only serious drawback on launch was the fact that it is shackled to slow mobile phone networks. Its significance is that, at a stroke, it made everyone else’s mobile technology look lame.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/dec/30/apple.google