Steve Jobs Unveils Apple iPhone at MacWorld Expo Event

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Steve Jobs Unveils Apple iPhone at MacWorld Expo Event

4:08 pm on January 9, 2007 | Category: Mobile Devices, Wireless, Cell Phones, Email, Multimedia

As analysts had predicted, Apple finally unveiled its much-anticipated iPod cell phone this morning at the MacWorld Expo conference in San Francisco.

Apple Chairman, Steve Jobs, who showed off the device to a crowd of 4,000 people, described it as a widescreen iPod with touch controls, combined with a “revolutionary mobile phone,” and a “breakthrough” internet communicator.

“This is the day I’ve been looking forward to for two and a half years,” Jobs said, confirming one of the blogsphere’s most active rumors. “Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything.”

The 11.6-millimeter thick device uses a Mac OSX operating system and incorporates a 2-megapixel digital camera, 3.5-inch touch-sensitive color display, built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and free push email capability for Yahoo! Mail users.

“When you get a message, it’ll push it right out to the phone for you,” Jobs explained, after which Yahoo co-founder, Jerry Yang described the iPhone as being like “a BlackBerry without the exchange server.”

The iPhone device is expected to be available in the U.S. by June, and in several European markets by the fourth quarter of this year. Cingular Wireless has been given a “multi-year” exclusive contract to sell the device within the American market.

Many questions about Apple’s cell phone remain to be answered, however, including the looming threat of a patent dispute with Cisco, which currently owns the “iPhone” trademark in some markets.