Steve Jobs: "Google wants to kill the iPhone!!!!111 Adobe suxx0rz!!1111"

[DisturbedPervert]

Like with the ipod...just...good marketing saw it win out over equally good or better rivals.

I had a 2nd gen iPod, the only Apple product I've ever bought, and I thought it was superior to anything out at the time.  The scroll wheel was just better than any other user interface available back then.  Wouldn't buy again, and certainly would not buy an iPhone, but my iPod was pretty great for its time.

[Josquius]

The iPhone is only 3 years old though.  How do you think it developed a reputation as "THE phone"?

Until the last year or so, it was undisputably the best smartphone on the market, and the one everyone else has been chasing.  Even now, at best, companies have caught up with, but not passed, the iPhone.

The iphone has been passed in terms of sheer fucntionality, iphones can't even do multi-tasking which the new androids have down well. In terms of usability and all those other harder to guage things though...well I dunno.
The big advantage of the iphone now is its pre-existing good name and all the apps it has already.

As to how it became succesful in the first place...well people have written big papers on that one.
It just got a reputation early on as some sort of amazing super phone of the future. TV comedians made jokes about stealing them and since there was no competition and it had the ipod name to build on it just balooned.
Also I think the limited supplies early on really helped it a lot, lots of free marketing through news reports about how in demand it was.

[MadBurgerMaker]

As to how it became succesful in the first place

That's pretty easy:  The iPhone OS was more accessible and easier to use than the Palm and Blackberry OS when it came out, as far as the general public is concerned (still is IMO).  Once the Apple fanboys all bought theirs, that right there is what kept selling them.  Windows Mobile was and is a piece of shit, and Android wasn't being sold.

Also the cool touchscreen.  They also...out...advertised....Palm and Blackberry (they really hyped the thing up and got regular people to at least poke at them a little).