The first iPhone was released in June 2007 and was a phenomenonal success. The company could not keep pace with demand. Despite this, Jobs offered each employee a free iPhone.

Later, Jobs introduced users to the world of apps, which is now an integral part of smart phones.

Since then, every year, the world has been looking forward to the next big thing from Apple. Despite competition intensifying over the years with rival offering similar features at a lesser cost and, at times, even better features, Apple continuous to be the company that others look up to for innovation. As the company prepares to unveil its latest phone, we take a look at its phones over the years.

Apple’s biggest event to showcase its new launches
Big day for Apple iphone fans

2007: iPhone
Released on June 29, 2007, it featured quad-band GSM cellular connectivity with GPRS and EDGE support for data transfer. Jobs had generated such frenzy with his idea of a phone that thousands of people queued up outside stores to pick up a piece.

2008: iPhone 3G
Included GPS, 3G data and tri-band UMTS/HSDPA. Introduced the App Store, which was a platform for third-party applications.

2009: iPhone 3GS
The ‘S’ stood for speed. The phone had a 3-megapixel camera that supported video and 7.2 Mbit/s HSDPA downloading.

2010: iPhone 4
A phenomenal device, it came in a stainless steel frame, which doubled as an antenna, with internal components situated between aluminosilicate glass. It introduced ‘Retina Display’ with a pixel density of 326 pixels per inch while maintaining the same physical size and aspect ratio as its precursors. Was marketed as the thinnest smartphone in the world.
It introduced A4 system-on-chip, along with iOS 4, which introduced multitasking functionality and the FaceTime video chat for which it included a front-facing camera.

2011: iPhone 4s
Will forever be know for being released the year Jobs passed away.

2012: iPhone 5
Was the last iPhone to be overseen by Steve Jobs and the first to be developed under the guidance of Tim Cook. Came with an aluminum-based body, which was thinner and lighter than previous models, a taller screen, the A6 system-on-chip, LTE support, and a compact dock connector, which replaced the 30-pin design used by previous models.

2013: iPhone 5S
Home button came with a fingerprint recognition system, which can be used to unlock the phone and authenticate App Store and iTunes Store purchases. Came with A7 64-bit dual-core processor, the first 64-bit processor to be used on a smartphone, and the M7 ‘motion co-processor’.

2014: iPhone 6
The iPhone 6 Plus had a larger display. Both phones had a faster processor, upgraded cameras, improved LTE and Wi-Fi connectivity, and support for a near field communications-based mobile payment services.

2015: iPhone 6s
Came with upgraded system-on-chip, a 12-megapixel camera, improved fingerprint recognition sensor and LTE Advanced support. Introduced pressure-sensitive touch inputs.

2016: iPhone 7/7 Plus
Introduced new colour options, water and dust resistance and a new home button. It did away with the 3.5 mm headphone jack. Boasts of a better camera.

2017: iPhone?

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The award was worth $89.2 million when it was granted on Thursday, based on Apple’s $159.27 closing price. He received the performance-linked stock because Apple shares outperformed at least two-thirds of businesses in the S&P 500 Index over three years, according to a according to a regulatory filing Monday. It’s Cook’s fourth consecutive payout at the top threshold.

Earlier this month, Apple posted stronger-than-expected quarterly earnings, and the tech giant is expected to unveil its highly anticipated new iPhone at an event Sept.

Read More: Apple TV with 4K and HDR support reportedly coming this fall

Timothy Donald Cook is an American business executive, industrial engineer and developer. Cook is the Chief Executive Officer of Apple Inc., previously serving as the company’s Chief Operating Officer, under its founder Steve Jobs.

Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California that designs, develops, and sells consumer electronics, computer software, and online services.

The company’s hardware products include the iPhone smartphone, the iPad tablet computer, the Mac personal computers, the iPod portable media player, the Apple Watch smartwatch, Apple TV digital media player and HomePod smart speaker. Apple’s consumer software includes the macOS and iOS operating systems, the iTunes media player, the Safari web browser, and the iLife and iWork creativity and productivity suites. Its online services include the iTunes Store, the iOS App Store and Mac App Store, Apple Music, and iCloud.

Apple was founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne in April 1976 to develop and sell personal computers. It was incorporated as Apple Computer, Inc. in January 1977, and sales of its computers saw significant momentum and revenue growth for the company.

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So has Apple turned from a low-hanging fruit to a low-growing fruit?

April 24, 2013: Wall Street was grappling with a temptation to mix ‘Apple’ with ‘oranges’ all because the technology behemoth’s fourth quarter profits headed south in a decade. The shareholders are angry that Apple’s growth has slowed down and there is now a ring of unpredictability to its hitherto spectacularly steady growth.

Note: It is still profitable and its revenues increased by 11% to billion. But analysts are seeing red over the drop in Apple’s price-earnings (p/e) ration which has slipped to below ten for the first time. Profits-to-earnings ratio indicates how the markets see future profits compared with current income and any slipup in this metric is where the penny drops.

So it is now official: Apple has lost is mojo. It is no more the master of the universe hovering over the rest of us and is now like any other low-growth, albeit, steady company.

Tim Cook is not Steve Jobs. This is of course indisputable. Tim may have “cooked” up and sold 60 million smart phones and tablets in the three months to March, but Jobs made money for us just by strutting his stuff.

A lot of people believe that if Jobs were around, Apple may have ridden the stock crash from in September to recently with say, an iWatch or an iTV. But Cook decided to placate investors with the biggest share buyback in US corporate history: A payout of some billion by end of 2015 in the form of increased dividends and buybacks.

Of course, Apple under Cook has its own takers (if not tans) notwithstanding the current logjam in its growth and the overwhelming legacy of Steve Jobs. There is no unanimity among economic gurus about Apple’s demise either and one is encouraged to say that reports of Apple’s demise are greatly exaggerated.

Apple still boasts of juicy margins on most of its products. It still accounts for 45% of the profits of the PC. Its operating profit is still more than that of the top five PC vendors combined. Apple’s smart phones still account for more than 70% of its total profits.

Now what has happened that Apple can no more be on auto and spew out cash like an ATM? Blame it on the markets which respect not history or pedigree. Blame it on cheesy and cheeky rivals like Samsung. Blame it on consumers who are as trustworthy as Paul Madoff. And blame it on friends like Wall Street who are prone to pull the trigger at the first sight of an alarm. If Apple’s gross margin drops by a single percentage point, the earnings per share dips by And the panic spreads.

Samsung is now setting a scorching pace and taking the battle to Apple’s camp, with its battery of “phablets” (a combination of a phone and a tablet).

When things go wrong, nothing goes right. Apple got into another mess with its warranty policies in China and had to issue a public apology.

Apple’s USP has always been neither invention nor innovation but an uncanny ability to launch products that end up virtually obliterating the competition. Jobs had this ability to such an extent that the world stopped to take pause when he came up with an i-whatever. People queued up the night before the launch to be the first to own it. The idea was when you buy an iPad or a iPhone you were buying a slice of social status.

The problem for Apple in reality is not its competitors, not the market, not China, but its own image, its own hype. It became its own victim. It is simply unreal to be able to sustain this kind of an image which is itself the creation of a marketing genius. It is far too unreal to expect the paying consumer to continue to buy into your products ad nauseam and in continuum.

An innovator’s nightmare is to keep innovating like a robot. It’s like expecting creativity from a cubicle 9-5. If Apple’s noisy and fanatic fans tone down the music, they will hear that the i-Pod was bought from another company and tablets have been around since the Nineties.

And competition isn’t exactly sleeping to let Apple ride over them. Samsung has updated its phone line twice as fast as Apple. Think S3 and S4, think of the split-screen innovation in the Galaxy Note, and think Google’s Glasses.

Ironically, Apple’s competitors are beating Apple by playing its own game. Steve Jobs perfected the “run” strategy – introducing a new product that consumers want before competition attempts to take on its existing products. Now, Samsung’s S-series is giving Apple a similar “run” for its money.

Apple betted big on Steve Jobs who was a game-changer. It is now betting on Cook’s financial re-engineering. Don’t look for the ending, for the story is only headed toward a new twist…

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