Unknown to most North American consumers, a
mobile data and Internet service in Japan called i-mode has
been highly successful in that country for the past decade.
Unfortunately, mobile data services in North America have
lagged behind many European and Asian countries. However,
the situation changed rapidly with the iPhone, launched in the
US in June 2007. Consumers lined up for days for the chance
to purchase one, and over 500,000 units sold on the first
weekend. Since that time, over 42 million iPhones have been
sold, arguably making it one of the most successful mobile
phone products ever launched. What is it that makes the
iPhone such a success? In this paper we define a set of success
criteria to investigate the success of the iPhone and propose a
comprehensive success model. The success model can be used
by both academics and practitioners to understand the reasons
why, and ways to ensure that mobile data and commerce
services become successful.