The iPhone was released by Apple, and the world had never seen anything quite like it. It ushered in the age of portable tech and the smartphone era was born. Now startupsgeek.com has analysed the data to show how the world has changed since the launch of the first iPhone in 2007.

Since then the world has changed in unimaginable ways, and Apple has not only been part of the change, but also one of the driving forces of change.

In 2007:

• YouTube was two only years old
• 22% of online searches were still made on Yahoo!
• MySpace was the big social network and was worth $12 billion (€10 billion)
• Facebook had only 20 million users (which might sound a lot, but is only 1% of its user base today)
• £7.4 billion worth of paper cheques were spent on retail in the UK

 App revenues have exploded

The App Store didn’t exist when the iPhone was launched (the App Store was launched with the second generation iPhone). In 2009 app revenues were $4 billion (€3 billion), but are projected to be $581 billion (€494 billion) this year.

We buy more online and use our phones for over half of those purchases

In 2007, only 3.4% of retail sales were online; but this has now risen to over 26%, and over 50% of those purchases are done on mobile.

The UK spent over £1 billion on music streaming services

Not only will the UK spend over £1 billion on streaming services like Spotify and Amazon in 2020, but 83% of us listened to streamed content last year. This makes the UK the most prolific music streaming country.

UK third online advertising market in the world

When the iPhone was released, only 16% of ad spend was online, but it had grown to 57% by 2018. With over 50% of browsing of the internet now done on mobile, global ad spend on mobile was projected to be $165.7 billion (€140.9 billion) in 2019.

How we order takeaway has changed

Apps now account for 39% of takeaway and fast food deliveries. The takeaway market was worth £8.5 billion in 2019 and is expected to grow to £9.8 billion by 2021.

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