Amaya Toman Just six months after the first generation of the iPhone went on sale, Apple releases a new version with – by the standards of the time – a huge capacity of 16GB. The increase in capacity is undoubtedly good news, but it did not please those who already bought their iPhone.
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"For some users, memory is never enough," Greg Joswiak, Apple's vice president of worldwide marketing for iPod and iPhone products, said at the time in a related official press statement. "Now people can enjoy even more of their music, photos and videos on the world's most revolutionary mobile phone and the best Wi-Fi enabled mobile device." added.
When the first generation iPhone went on sale, it was initially available in variants with the lowest capacity of 4 GB and the highest capacity of 8 GB. However, it soon became apparent that the 4GB variant was too small. Said capacity was woefully inadequate for Apple users even before the advent of the App Store, which allowed people to fill their phones with downloadable software.
In short, a model with 16GB of storage capacity was clearly needed, so Apple simply supplied it. But the whole thing was not without a certain scandal. In early September 2007, Apple discontinued the 4GB iPhone and – in a controversial move – dropped the price of the 8GB model from $599 to $399. For several months, users had only one option. Then Apple decided to boost sales by launching a new 16GB variant for $499.
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After some confusion with AT&T (at the time, the only carrier you could get an iPhone from), it was also revealed that customers would be able to upgrade from an 8GB to a 16GB iPhone without signing a new contract. Instead, those looking to upgrade could pick up where their old contract left off. At the time, Apple was second in US mobile market share to BlackBerry with 28% compared to BlackBerry's 41% share. Globally, Apple ranked third with 6,5%, behind Nokia (52,9%) and BlackBerry (11,4%). This was largely due to the fact that the iPhone was only available in a few countries.
The 16GB storage option for the iPhone persisted until 2016 when the iPhone 7 was introduced (albeit as the smallest storage option).
