Posted by & filed under Part 1 Business in a Global Environment, Part 4: Marketing Management, Part 5 Managing Technology and Information.

Description: On June 29, 2007, the first iPhone went on sale. The Apple (AAPL) device benefited from breathless advance buzz but also had its skeptics: It cost $600 and had no physical keyboard, limited e-mail options, and no copy-and-paste. In hindsight, it was clearly dumb to bet against Steve Jobs & Co. Apple has since sold more than 217 million iPhones worldwide and sparked a commercial, cultural, and—most surprising—behavioral revolution. According to a study of medical workers at the Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Mass., 76 percent say they’ve experienced “phantom vibration,” that insistent buzz from an imagined text or phone call. Scientists speculate it’s the result of random nerves firing, biochemical noise that our brains easily tuned out until they were reconditioned by the iPhone.

Source: Businessweek.com

Date: June 21, 2012

Link: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-06-21/the-first-five-years-of-the-iphone-obsession#p1

Questions for Discussions:

  • What is your answer to the question in the report: Is the iPhone a “bicycle for the mind,” as the late Steve Jobs said about the first Mac, or a crutch that does too much of our thinking for us and increasingly takes the place of real human connections?
  • What future product development can you imagine for iPhone and other similar devices?

 

Leave a Reply