Launched by Apple in January 2007 in the United States, the iPhone is a
smartphone including an iPod (the iPod was launched in October 2001), a
camera, and a web browser, with the following specifications: large
tactile screen (3,5 inches), synchronization with the iTunes platform
to download music and videos, camera of 2 megapixels, Safari browser,
Mac OS X operating system, access to GSM (Global System for Mobile
Telecommunications) and EDGE (Enhanced Data for GSM Evolution), WiFi,
and Bluetooth. The first iPhone was available for US$499 for the 4 G
version and $599 for the 8 G version in the U.S., and launched in
Europe in late 2007 and in Asia in 2008. Other models followed, the
latest one being the iPhone 4, launched in June 2010.
August 2007 > A quote by Denis Zwirn, president of the digital
bookstore Numilog
Denis Zwirn is the president of Numilog, the main French-language
digital bookstore. He wrote in August 2007: "The digital book is not
any more a topic for symposiums, conceptual definitions, or divination
by some 'experts'. It is a commercial product and a tool for reading.
There is no need to wait for some new hypermodern and hypertextual tool
carefully orchestrating its specificity from the print book. We need to
offer books that can be easily read on any ebook reader used by
customers, sooner or later with an electronic ink display. And to offer
them as an industry. The digital book is not - and will never be -- a
niche product (dictionaries, travel guides, books for the blind); it is
becoming a mass market product, with multiple forms, like the
traditional book." (NEF Interview)