<P> In April 2003, at the "All Things Digital" executive conference, Jobs expressed his belief that tablet PCs and traditional PDAs were not good choices as high - demand markets for Apple to enter, despite receiving many requests for Apple to create another PDA . He believed that cell phones were going to become important devices for portable information access, and that mobile phones needed to have excellent synchronization software . At that time, instead of focusing on a follow - up to their Newton PDA, Jobs had Apple focus on the iPod . Jobs also had Apple develop the iTunes software, which can be used to synchronize content with iPod devices . iTunes was released in January 2001 . On September 7, 2005, Apple and Motorola released the ROKR E1, the first mobile phone to use iTunes . Jobs was unhappy with the ROKR, feeling that having to compromise with a non-Apple designer (Motorola) prevented Apple from designing the phone they wanted to make . In September 2006, Apple discontinued support for the ROKR, and released a version of iTunes that included references to an as - yet unknown mobile phone that could display pictures and video . </P> <P> On January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs announced iPhone at the Macworld convention, receiving substantial media attention . Jobs announced that the first iPhone would be released later that year . On June 29, 2007, the first iPhone was released . </P> <P> On June 11, 2007, Apple announced at the Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference that the iPhone would support third - party applications using the Safari engine . Third parties would be able to create Web 2.0 applications, which users could access via the internet . Such applications appeared even before the release of the iPhone; the first of these, called OneTrip, was a program meant to keep track of users' shopping lists . On June 29, 2007, Apple released version 7.3 of iTunes to coincide with the release of iPhone . This release contains support for iPhone service activation and syncing . </P>

When was iphone launched for the first time