Apple iPhone

Touch-screen smartphones may be a dime a dozen these days, but let's not get too blase about the game-changers of late who helped revolutionize a (relatively) new product category that's changed the way hundreds of millions of people consume technology each day.

When Steve Jobs pulled the iPhone out of his pocket at a the Macworld conference on January 9, 2007 -- it went on sale six months later -- Apple transformed the the mobile world. Unlike other smartphone collaborations between manufacturers and carriers, Apple got its way by insisting that only its engineers would develop the unit's hardware and software. It paid off. Even though the product was baptized in hype -- some dubbed it "the Jesus phone" -- it lived up the advance billing. Apple would go on to sell more than 73 million iPhones by the end of its fiscal 2010 year. Since then, Apple has released four newer generations of the iPhone, each one offering more and better functionality than its predecessor.