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Video: Celebrate 8 Years of iPhone With This Hilarious Blast From Steve Ballmer’s Past

Published Jun 29th, 2015 12:58PM EDT
Steve Ballmer Laughing iPhone Video

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It’s iPhone day today, so we thought we’d celebrate it with a video from the past that’ll never go out of style. Before you ask, no, it’s not the official iPhone introduction from Macworld 2007.

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On June 29th, 2007, Apple released the first iPhone, a phone that completely changed the mobile landscape. Giants of that mobile landscape, including Nokia, Blackberry, and Microsoft ignored the threat at first, but Apple marched on and changed the landscape as we knew it.

The iPhone allowed Apple (and Google) to take over the smartphone business in the years that followed – the former makes all the money, and the latter has the lion’s share of the market, leaving others in the dust.

But soon after the iPhone was introduced in early 2007, a former Microsoft exec laughed at the expensive iPhone and the fact that it lacked a physical keyboard.

That memorable interview lives on.

Older smartphone users will remember Steve Ballmer’s original reaction to the iPhone. The former Microsoft CEO thought the iPhone would have little effect on the smartphone market. Jump forward eight years, and Apple is selling a record number of iPhones, Ballmer is out of Microsoft, and smartphones with keyboards – cough, BlackBerry, cough – are basically nowhere to be found.

“Five hundred dollars? Fully subsidized? With a plan?” Ballmer said. “That is the most expensive phone in the world. And it doesn’t appeal to business customers because it doesn’t have a keyboard, which makes it not a very good email machine.”

After so many years, the video below is still worth watching:

Chris Smith Senior Writer

Chris Smith has been covering consumer electronics ever since the iPhone revolutionized the industry in 2008. When he’s not writing about the most recent tech news for BGR, he brings his entertainment expertise to Marvel’s Cinematic Universe and other blockbuster franchises.

Outside of work, you’ll catch him streaming almost every new movie and TV show release as soon as it's available.