The iPhone Almost Didn’t Happen , Steve Jobs’ Original Pitch Was Rejected Twice Inside Apple

Somewhere on Apple’s Cupertino campus in early 2005, a handful of engineers found the guts to present Steve Jobs with a concept they thought had the potential to revolutionize the company. Their goal was to construct a phone. After hearing the suggestion and giving it some thought, Jobs declared it to be “the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.” Deflated but not beaten, the engineers departed. They would make another pitch. And once more. In those early discussions, what would eventually become the iPhone—the gadget that would revolutionize computing, transform entire sectors, and create trillions of dollars in value—nearly perished due to Apple’s own leadership rather than rivals or market forces.

From Jobs’ point of view, the pitch’s timing could not have been worse. The iPod was printing cash. Since its 2001 release, it has grown so popular that by 2005 it was responsible for about half of Apple’s earnings. The white earphones, which were ubiquitous on college campuses and subway travelers, served as cultural markers. Jobs didn’t want to jeopardize that golden goose for a product category he didn’t trust at all. Midway through the 2000s, mobile phones were awful, with cumbersome user interfaces, limitations imposed by carriers, and design flaws all over the place. Jobs hated the thought of ceding power to businesses like AT&T or Verizon, who historically set the rules for what features phones might have and how they would be marketed.

The iPhone Development: Key Information

Another, more pragmatic dread was cannibalization. Would anyone still purchase an iPod if Apple produced a phone with music capabilities? Internal conversations were plagued by the question. Engineers like Tony Fadell, who had played a key role in developing the iPod, had to contend that the threat was unavoidable: if Apple didn’t develop a phone that could play music well immediately, they would fall behind. Jobs, however, was not persuaded. Not quite yet.

The company sought a compromise before committing to a fully Apple-designed phone. They collaborated with Motorola to develop the ROKR E1, a phone capable of playing music from iTunes. When it debuted in 2005, everyone was disappointed. The gadget was cumbersome, slow, and could only hold 100 songs—a capricious limitation that defied technical logic and enraged all users. The ROKR was a clarifying failure rather than merely a failure. Jobs came to the conclusion that Apple couldn’t depend on partners who didn’t share their values. They would need to have complete control over the phone if they were to make one.

Two opposing visions surfaced within Apple. The first, known as P1, suggested enhancing the iPod’s well-known click-wheel interface with phone functionality. It was the safe choice, a gradual improvement on a tried-and-true offering. Building a phone around Apple’s experimental multi-touch technology—the same technology being investigated for a tablet device—was the much more ambitious goal of the second project, P2. At first, Jobs preferred the tablet, but developers under the direction of Scott Forstall and Tony Fadell persuaded him that it would be more practical to reduce the technology to a phone. Jobs approved the multi-touch phone project following allegedly contentious internal discussions. P2 evolved into the iPhone.

The gadget nearly failed even then. The initial prototypes were a complete failure. They kept crashing. The system would freeze if you made a call, played a song, and then went online. The device’s inability to be properly demonstrated by engineers presented a clear challenge because Jobs intended to introduce it on stage at Macworld 2007. Apple developers later dubbed the technique “the golden path”—a precise, meticulously practiced series of steps that prevented the crashes. Jobs would only demonstrate the features that were functional, avoiding those that weren’t. Thousands of people witnessed the high-wire feat, and millions more watched it online.

There is a noticeable tension when reading about that keynote address on January 9, 2007. Jobs showed off visual voicemail, rotated pictures with a pinch motion, and swiped his finger across the screen with assurance. Engineers held their breath behind the scenes. The gadget might malfunction on stage if Jobs did something impromptu or strayed from the script. It didn’t. The demonstration was successful. The crowd applauded. And the world was altered.

This narrative is remarkable not only because the iPhone overcame internal opposition, but also because Steve Jobs, the man who is remembered by history as the iPhone’s visionary creator, was the source of that opposition. At initially, Jobs had trouble seeing the future. Engineers who were more enthusiastic about the concept than he was had to persuade, push, and convince him. It serves as a reminder that even the most revolutionary things are the result of convoluted, difficult processes rather than isolated moments of brilliance.

It turned out that the fear of cannibalizing the iPod was both valid and unimportant. The iPod was eventually killed by the iPhone, but it was replaced by something far more valuable. Revenue from iPhones surpassed that of iPods by 2010. The iPod was virtually obsolete by 2015. Jobs had been right when he predicted that phones would eat into music players, but he had misjudged the potential size of the phone market. Sometimes the wisest course of action is to ruin your current success before someone else does.

Looking back at how close this was to not happening, it’s difficult to avoid feeling a little dizzy. If Jobs had stuck to his initial rejection, if the engineers had given up after the first dismissal, if the ROKR hadn’t failed so spectacularly, the iPhone might never have existed. Some other company—maybe Nokia, maybe BlackBerry, maybe someone else entirely—would have defined the smartphone era. The world of technology would be completely different, and Apple would still be producing computers and music players.

The iPhone that launched in 2007 wasn’t perfect. It lacked basic features like copy-paste and third-party apps. It has an average battery life. It was costly and only available to AT&T. But it worked in ways that fundamentally reimagined what a phone could be, and that was enough. Billions of people still use gadgets that are directly descended from that original model fifteen years later. Steve Jobs is best known for developing the product that he once described as the most ridiculous concept he had ever heard. Brilliance is not always the driving force behind history. Sometimes it comes down to perseverance, engineers who don’t accept failure, and leaders who are prepared to reconsider when the data calls for it.