iPhone
also referred to as: iphones
includes iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 5, iPhone 5s, iPhone X, iPhone 5C, iPhone 7, iPhone XS, iPhone 6S, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone XR and 6 more
68 statements across 51 episodes · 21 bullish · 12 bearish · 31 people on the record · first statement Jul 15, 2017 by Benedict Evans · said 753 times in 250 episodes since 2017 · across every show →
Mentions by year, the whole family
brought up most by Benedict Evans (251), Chris Dixon (55), Steven Sinofsky (42), Alex Rampell (37), Frank Chen (30), Marc Andreessen (25), Michael Copeland (21), Ken Kocienda (17)
tap a year for its mentions
2026 38 mentions in 16 episodes 2 per episode
- The Economics of AI Usage and What's Next For SaaS | Benedict Evans on a16z
- Why Physical AI Is the Next Frontier | The a16z Show
- Why Claude Feels Different (And What That Means for AI) | The a16z Show
- How Bots, Deepfakes and AI Agents Are Forcing a New Internet Identity Layer | Alex Blania on a16z
- The Biggest Bottlenecks For AI: Energy & Cooling
- Why Fei-Fei Li Is Betting on Spatial Intelligence
- Box CEO on the AI Adoption Gap | The a16z Show
- AI Markets: Deep Dive with a16z's David George
- 8 more episodes that year, every mention in 2026 →
2025 77 mentions in 38 episodes 2 per episode
- AI Eats the World: Benedict Evans on the Next Platform Shift
- Former Microsoft Executive on Apple’s Hidden China Problem
- Why AI Moats Still Matter (And How They've Changed)
- Steven Sinofsky & Balaji Srinivasan on the Future of M&A, AI & Tech
- Robinhood CEO: Making Everyone An Owner
- Michael Truell: How Cursor Builds at the Speed of AI
- Will LLMs Get Us To AGI?
- The Lawyerly Society vs. The Engineering State: Who Owns the Future?
- 30 more episodes that year, every mention in 2025 →
2024 4 mentions in 4 episodes 1 per episode
2023 27 mentions in 14 episodes 2 per episode
- Building Hardware and Taking on the Phone Giants with Carl Pei
- Evolve or Die: The Future of the Creative Process, Artist Authenticity, and the Value of the Music
- Safety in Numbers: Keeping AI Open
- What is the Future of Hollywood?
- Leveling Up with Roblox's David Baszucki
- Big Ideas 2024: The Consumer AI Battleground Moves from Model to UX with Alex Immerman
- Redefining Partnership with Adam Neumann
- The Calculus of Success
- 6 more episodes that year, every mention in 2023 →
2022 7 mentions in 4 episodes 2 per episode
2020 8 mentions in 5 episodes 2 per episode
2019 539 mentions in 149 episodes 4 per episode
- a16z Podcast | Apple Takes on Payments and Your Wrist
- a16z Podcast | Apple and the Case of Invisible But Audible Innovation
- a16z Podcast | Mobile is Eating the World (and Apple is Gobbling Fastest)
- Inside the Apple Factory: Software Design in the Age of Steve Jobs
- a16z Podcast | Apple Has Lock on Luxury Smartphones, But Not Business of TV
- a16z Podcast | What's at the Core of the Latest Apple Announcement?
- a16z Podcast | How Many Taps in the Apple (Plus) Tree?
- a16z Podcast | Capitalizing on an Autonomous Vehicle Future
- 141 more episodes that year, every mention in 2019 →
2018 22 mentions in 9 episodes 2 per episode
- Company Building in Crypto: A Conversation between Brian Armstrong and Chris Dixon
- Distribution, Channel & Partnerships
- 10 Years Too Early: On a Tech Career, Business, and Investing
- Rise of the Super App: Mobile-First Product Ideas from China
- Product Marketing for New Products
- Crypto and the Evolution of Open Source
- Cryptonetworks and Cities: Analogies
- Crypto and Decentralization: Building Blocks
- 1 more episode that year, every mention in 2018 →
2017 31 mentions in 11 episodes 3 per episode
- The Promise of AI
- What Happens When Mobile (Really) Hits the Wallet
- Mobile Is Eating the World, 2015
- 10 Year Futures (vs. What's Happening Now)
- Mobile Is Eating the World, 2014
- Mobile Is Eating the World, 2016
- AI: What's Working, What's Not
- The Future of Money: Banking on Fintech
- 3 more episodes that year, every mention in 2017 →
Everything said about iPhone, oldest first
Jul 15, 2017
Jul 15, 2017
Jul 15, 2017 bearish
Evans: Chinese teenagers prefer iPhones and Xiaomi over Samsung
“Indeed, if you then ask Chinese teenagers what brand they want, first they say they want an iPhone, then they say they want a phone from interesting new brands like Xiaomi or Meizu and Samsung is a hand-me-down phone they get from their grandmother. They all h…”
Jul 16, 2017 neutral
Jan 2, 2019
Benedict Evans: Installing a smartphone app won't mean downloading code within five years
“If I was to say I installed an app on my Android smartphone in five years, I don't really know what that would mean. You know, what would install mean? You know, what would app actually mean? What would Android mean? And so there's that question. Yeah, exactly…”
Jan 2, 2019 neutral
Jan 2, 2019 neutral
Jan 2, 2019 bullish
Jan 2, 2019 bullish
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Evans: Comparing iOS and Android to Mac vs Windows is useless
“And I'm kind of, again, I'm sort of exasperated by people who think that looking at Windows versus Mac tells you something about this, because both the iPhone business is in a fundamentally different position in the industry to where the Mac Corp position was,…”
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Jan 2, 2019 bullish
Jan 2, 2019 bearish
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Jan 2, 2019 neutral
Benedict Evans: Apple Watch strategy enhances iPhone, unlike Google's cloud approach
“I mean, I think, you know, to Stephen's point about platform, this is clearly, you know, and again, this is what speaks to the, again, a sort of thing I talk about a lot, which is kind of a difference between Apple and Google, which is for Google, there's a wh…”
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Sinofsky: Apple is on a path to untether the Watch from the iPhone
“The one thing I will say that's going to be magical is how Apple Like, evolves, their historic way of doing things has been to tether them, and then untether them over time, and so what I think is going to be interesting to see is if they can untether the watc…”
Jan 2, 2019
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Sanchez: Latinos rapidly adopt consumer technologies like iPhones
“We're fast adapters of technology. I mean, I can go into some of the poorest homes that I represent, and it's amazing that their kids have iPhones, and that they're working, and that they're texting, and so we are very good assimilators of the technology that …”
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Lawson: iPhone call apps are merely touchscreen versions of push-button phones
“If you want to make a phone call, the only change that's really happened in a 150 years was dialing with an operator, to dialing with a rotary, to dialing with a push button. Now open up the phone app on your iPhone. Super computer in your pocket. It's still j…”
Jan 2, 2019
Benedict Evans: Bosch displayed 15 diverse products using identical sensor components
“Bosch had this great display where they had, like, 15 different consumer electronics products from the surface to an iPhone to a drone to a Nest, and they all had the same Bosch component sensor, sort of tilt sensor switch or something in them.”
Jan 2, 2019 neutral
Sinofsky: You couldn't invent the iPhone in 1950 due to system complexity
“We now build systems that no one understands, and that classic, if I could get a time machine and go back to, like, 1950, I'd invent whatever your favorite product is now, and then you realize you couldn't come up with an iPhone in 1950.”
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Jan 2, 2019 neutral
Jan 2, 2019 bullish
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Jan 2, 2019
Jan 2, 2019 bullish
James Rogers: Future household wealth will be defined by 3D printer capability
“And I think it's, I mean, I think in the future you're going to have a fancy three D printer in your home and how wealthy you are is going to be what type of three D printer you have. If you're really wealthy, you can print the latest and greatest iPhone. If y…”
Jan 2, 2019
Jan 2, 2019 bullish
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Casado: Companies can map rooms using iPhone speakers and microphones via sonar
“There are companies that will take, if you have your phone out, what they'll do is they will use the speaker to send out like a hypersonic Sound that you can't hear, then, sorry, they use the microphone, the speaker to do that, and they use the microphone to c…”
Jan 2, 2019
McAfee: Steve Jobs fought opening the App Store to developers for a year
“The compliments are so tricky that they actually tripped up Steve Jobs really badly. This is not lore. This is fact. He did not want to open up the app store to any outside developers. He thought he had to maintain super tight control over that digital environ…”
Jan 2, 2019 neutral
Evans: Apple's App Store exists to drive high-margin iPhone sales
“The classic thing that drives me crazy, people talking about Apple, thinking that the app store is like a primary revenue driver for Apple, when the whole purpose of the app store is to drive sales of a 700 dollar iPhone every two years at a 50% gross margin.”
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Nazarov: The tech industry overrates top-down innovation due to survivorship bias
“On the top-down approach, I think we give too much weight to the beauty of top-down. You know, we only see it when it works, that there's the genius iPod product, there's the genius iPhone product, but, you know, how many, what, how many hundreds of products d…”
Jan 2, 2019 neutral
Evans: Apple's 2018 iPhone lineup expands to roughly 50 global SKUs
“They've got six colors and multiple memory sizes, so you kind of count up all the SKUs they're going to have, plus the SKUs for different regions, plus the multiple SIM thing for China. They're going to have like 50 SKUs as opposed to one SKU.”
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Jan 2, 2019 bearish
Sinofsky: Competitor chips will lag iPhone launch and lack Android software optimization
“Those are going to ship and they have two problems. They're going to, Ship after the iPhone, which is going to be available in, like, 10 days or whatever, and they're going to be on Android phones that have no Android optimized for anything that, that they do,…”
Jan 2, 2019 neutral
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Feb 24, 2019
Apple Shipped Original iPhone App Icons at 57 Pixels Square
“The we determined that if you made a rectangle that was 57 pixels square, that pretty much everybody could tap it a hundred percent of the time. No matter where it was, again, since you were going quickly, you could tap it comfortably. And that, Number, he jus…”
Feb 24, 2019
Feb 24, 2019 neutral
Feb 24, 2019
Feb 24, 2019 positive
Ken Kocienda Invented the iPhone Magnifying Loupe for Cursor Placement
“The one thing that I did implement for the first iPhone was the loop. So you press and hold, and it would give that little magnifying glass above your finger that would show. And the whole idea of that is that we wanted your finger to be right where The insert…”
Feb 24, 2019
Apple Halted All iPhone App Work in 2005 for Software Keyboard
“Henri, who was the software engineering manager, called all of the engineers out in, out of our offices, into the hallway. We had a group meeting. Again, about two dozen people, probably even less than that, and said, okay, you all stop. Stop what you're doing…”
Feb 24, 2019
Steve Jobs Mandated Software Keyboard to Free Screen Space for Apps
“His idea was that We want, we need a keyboard some of the time, but we certainly don't need it all of the time, and so the idea of the keyboard being in software is that it could get out of the way, it could go off the screen, and which would then turn, make t…”
Apr 1, 2019 bullish
Evans: Apple services lock in iPhone users like Amazon Prime locks shoppers
“All of these services are they all bind you into the phone. And so there is a, you know, just as everything Amazon adds to Prime keeps you from cancelling your Prime account, and that drives every, drives all of your purchases through Amazon. All of these thin…”
Apr 1, 2019 neutral
Apr 1, 2019 neutral
Dec 12, 2019 neutral
Andreessen: Breakthrough technologies always have 25-to-50-year backstories of failed attempts
“Every successful technology that I'm aware of, you know, the things that are, like, all of a sudden, like, the next big thing, like the iPhone in 2007, or, you know, just as an example they all have this, like, incredible 25 or 40 or fifty-year backstory”
Dec 30, 2019 positive
Chen: Mojo Vision's micro-display features 14,000 PPI density
“Made out of micro LEDs, this thing is half a millimeter across and has a pixel density of 14,000 pixels per inch. The latest greatest iPhone clocks in as just under 500, so this thing has 30, 40 times the pixel density of the latest greatest iPhone and is half…”
Feb 20, 2020
Casado: Zero-click phone exploits cost $2M-$2.5M on the black market
“If you were to buy on the black market an exploit to break into a phone, for example, an Android phone, it would cost about 2.5 million dollars if it doesn't require the participation of the user. If you wanted to break into an iPhone, it's about two million d…”
Apr 29, 2020 positive
Dec 27, 2022
Dec 12, 2024 negative
Wickramasekara: Pharma researchers do not lack tech literacy
“I think there's sometimes this, like, unfair caricature that people in pharma, like, don't know how to turn on a computer and that the industry just, like, doesn't believe in technology and so forth. I don't think belief in the technology is, like, lacking. I …”
Apr 11, 2025 neutral
May 28, 2025 neutral
Jun 18, 2025 neutral
Jun 18, 2025 neutral
Jun 18, 2025 neutral
Aug 8, 2025 negative
Sinofsky: Steve Jobs framed iPhone market share by manufacturer to undercut rivals
“Steve Jobs, like, put up a slide at the iPhone launch of mobile phone share, but he very deliberately chose to measure it by the manufacturer of phones so that it diminished the share of Windows Phone. But he also could have just done it by operating system, w…”
Oct 8, 2025 positive
Oct 16, 2025 bearish
Oct 22, 2025
Feb 9, 2026
Apr 2, 2026 negative
Blania: Older Android phones cannot be trusted for biometric re-authentication
“With a new iPhone, you can have meaningful amount of trust against that, but with old Android phones basically not. And so yeah, you know, because like you can just you can just show a deep fake essentially either through a display or just directly injected in…”
Aug 26, 2026 bullish
Acharya: Consumer app renaissance is fueled by $200 monthly subscriptions
“It's like Christmas, 2009 with the iPhone. People want to try new apps, but unlike the 99 cents days, they're willing to pay 200 a month, so it's sort of a renaissance for consumer builders, and yeah, I think that things have changed.”
Sep 4, 2026 bullish
Johnson: Atlas achieves bullet-time effects using only three iPhones
“But now with Atlas, we can do this with just as few, through three cameras. So like no studio capture, no green screen, no expensive calibration. We can literally stick like three cameras on tri, three iPhones on tripods use these to take sort of a video of so…”