The iPhone's introduction in 2007 triggered more than half of all global mobile broadband growth over the following decade, according to a new paper by Mark Jamison and Peter Wang published June 8, 2026, as an op-ed in RealClearMarkets. The study challenges how antitrust regulators assess market power in digital industries, arguing that enforcers routinely overlook the system-wide value created by major innovations when they analyze products in isolation. By examining the iPhone not as a standalone product but as a catalyst for an entire ecosystem, the authors found economic impacts that extend far beyond Apple's own sales.
Using data from 56 countries, the research estimated that the iPhone-led smartphone revolution was responsible for over half of mobile broadband adoption growth during the study period. Mobile broadband subscriptions worldwide soared from 268 million in 2007 to 4.7 billion by 2017. While the iPhone itself represented only a fraction of total smartphone sales—with Android devices quickly surpassing Apple in unit volume—it fundamentally transformed what consumers expected mobile devices to do. When Apple launched the iPhone, smartphones were dominated by Blackberry, Microsoft, and Nokia; within a decade, those systems had effectively vanished even as smartphone shipments exploded and camera sales collapsed.
The effect varied dramatically by geography. In OECD nations, smartphones accelerated already-growing broadband adoption. But in non-OECD countries, the new smartphones appear to explain essentially the entire rise in mobile broadband during the relevant period. According to the authors, without the transformation launched by the iPhone, mobile broadband in much of the developing world would likely have remained effectively non-existent for years. The iPhone wasn't merely another smartphone competing for market share—it was a catalyst that reshaped and even created industries, accelerated broadband investment, altered consumer behavior, and induced imitation.
The study argues that this broader system-wide value is largely invisible in modern antitrust analysis. When regulators narrowly define markets as isolated products—treating search, advertising, app stores, social media, and smartphones as separate components—they risk missing the larger gains generated by innovation. The authors point to ongoing cases: the Justice Department's cases against Google treat search and advertising as distinct markets, the FTC's pursuit of Meta treated Instagram and WhatsApp as products whose acquisitions allegedly reduced competition, and the DOJ's recent case against Apple treats the iPhone as a self-contained product over which Apple allegedly exercises excessive control. Yet economists have long understood that digital markets are better viewed as interconnected systems whose value emerges from interactions across technologies, industries, and users. Competition often comes not from producing a marginally cheaper version of an existing product, but from redefining the surrounding ecosystem entirely.
The danger, the report concludes, isn't simply that regulators may overestimate market power—it's that they underestimate market value. When regulators define markets narrowly, they risk punishing the very firms that create system-wide gains. The more important the innovation, the more interconnected its effects, and the less likely conventional antitrust is to measure them properly. History shows how quickly digital dominance can evaporate: before the iPhone, Blackberry was widely seen as the inevitable winner in smartphones, yet all the early leaders were rapidly displaced not because regulators engineered competition, but because innovators reimagined the broader system.