Apple’s introduction of the iPhone in 2007 initiated a profound and transformative new economic innovation.
While central bankers and national leaders struggled with a deep financial crisis and stagnation, the fervent demand for iPhones, and the wave of smartphones that followed, was a rare force for growth. Today, use of mobile data is rising at 50% per year globally, a stunning number that shows the revolutionary impact of the smartphone.1
More than just hardware, the smartphone also inaugurated a new era for software developers around the world. Apple’s opening up of the App Store in 2008, followed by Android Market (now Google Play) and other app stores, created a way for iOS and Android developers to write mobile applications that could run on smartphones anywhere.
