The iPhone turns 15
When Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was asked to make a bigger iPhone after some signal drop issues with 2010’s iPhone 4 because of its small 3.5-inch footprint, he said that he was not a fan of bigger phones from companies like Samsung because “you can’t get your hand around it,” and “no one’s going to buy that.”
When Stern asked Apple’s marketing chief Greg Joswiak about Samsung and other Android manufacturers who were cranking out bigger phones at that time, he said that he found them annoying because they were just producing poor iPhone knock-offs.
They were annoying. And they were annoying because, as you know, they ripped off our technology. They took the innovations that we had created and created a poor copy of it, and just put a bigger screen around it. So, yeah, we were none too pleased.”
Funnily enough, the video begins with the co-creator of the iPod and the iPhone Tony Fadell saying that the company started working on the iPhone after competitors began cranking out feature phones with camera and music capabilities.
Around the same time, Apple was also involved in legal battles with manufacturers like HTC, Motorola, Amazon, and Nokia, some of whom it had sued and some of whom it had been sued by.
When Stern reached out to a Samsung spokesperson, they said that the company pioneered many industry firsts, such as large OLED displays, which by the way Apple buys from it, and water and dust resistance. The first few Apple phones were powered by Samsung processors.