Hear Steve Jobs nail the future of mobile a decade ago
An audio recording of an interview with the former Apple CEO comes to light.
Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone on Jan. 9, 2007, calling it a "revolutionary and magical product that is literally five years ahead of any other mobile phone." The App Store appeared the following year.
"The phone of the future will be differentiated by software." A decade later, in the era of iOS and Android, that prediction by Steve Jobs has come true.
Jointly published Wednesday by The Information and Wall Street Journal, an audio interview from 2008 reveals the Apple CEO's thoughts on the future of mobile phones when Apple's App Store was barely a month old.
"I think there are a lot of people, and I'm one of them, who believe that mobile's going to get quite serious," Jobs told reporter Nick Wingfield, then at the Journal and now at The Information. "They can be mighty useful and we're just at the tip of that. That's going to be huge, I think."
The App Store turned 10 this year on July 10, and it's evident that our lives are vastly different from 2008. Today, 500 million people from 155 countries visit the App Store every week, choosing from more than 2 million apps available for download, according to Statista.
The Apple co-founder, who passed away in October 2011, also got it right when it comes to mobile games.
"You've got everything from games to medical software to business analytics software to all sorts of stuff on it," Jobs said in the 2008 interview, "but games is the single biggest category ... I actually think the iPhone and the iPod touch may emerge as really viable devices in this mobile gaming market this holiday season."
Today, the games category of apps available on the App Store tops the platform with a 25 percent market share, according to Statista. The second largest category is business apps, with a 10 percent market share.
Apple didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
You can listen to the full interview at The Information or Wall Street Journal.
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