That little "i" actually has more than one meaning!
This Is What the “I” in iPhone Stands For
Updated on May 12, 2025
Even if you don’t have an iPhone yourself, many of your friends and family probably do. The iPhone took the world by storm when it debuted in 2007, and it now has more than 1.3 billion users, making it one of the biggest smartphone brands in the world. But even with its massive popularity, can you confidently say what the “I” in iPhone stands for? Read on to see if you’re correct.
The history of the “I” in iPhone
If you guessed that the “I” stood for “Internet,” well, you’re half right. That little “I” actually got its start long before the iPhone became a reality. The first Apple product with an “I” in its name was the iMac computer, released back in 1998. Never mind phones that could access the Internet—back then, computers that could do so were a rarity. So the “I” originally stood for Internet, to highlight the Mac’s revolutionary Internet capacities.
Other meanings for the “I” in iPhone
But when that first iMac launched, the “I” had several other meanings as well. When Steve Jobs introduced the iMac, he displayed a presentation with not one but five potential I-meanings. “Steve Jobs said the ‘I’ stands for ‘internet, individual, instruct, inform [and] inspire,'” explains Paul Bischoff, a privacy advocate at Comparitech. However, while these words were an important part of the presentation, Jobs also said that the “I” “didn’t have an official meaning,” Bischoff says. “He also alluded to it referencing ‘I’ as a personal pronoun, and ‘instruction’ for education purposes.” So it seems the “I” is open to Interpretation.
Not to mention, while the “I” got its start as “Internet,” and it’s true that Internet access was the iPhone’s biggest selling point when it debuted in 2007, some Apple products with I-names didn’t even have Internet access (think the early iPod). So the “I” isn’t so much representative of a single shortened word as it is a memorable—dare we say Iconic—brand identifier.
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Source:
Backlinko: “iPhone Users and Sales Stats”
