IPhone lined up outside the stores nationwide. The passionate reaction to the launch of the iPhone resulted in sections of the media dubbing it the 'Jesus phone'. Following this successful release in the US, the first generation iPhone was made available in the UK, France, and Germany in November 2007, and Ireland and Austria in the spring of 2008. On July 11, 2008, Apple released the iPhone 3G in twenty-two countries, including the original six. Apple released the iPhone 3G in upwards of eighty countries and territories. Apple announced the iPhone 3GS on June 8, 2009, along with plans to release
IPhone of the iPhone have also garnered praise. The iPhone is one of the most widely used smartphones in the world, and its success has been credited with helping Apple become one of the world's most valuable publicly traded companies. Development of what was to become the iPhone began in 2004, when Apple started to gather a team of 1,000 employees (including Jonathan Ive, the designer behind the iMac and iPod) to work on the highly confidential "Project Purple." Apple CEO Steve Jobs steered the original focus away from a tablet (which Apple eventually revisited in the form of the iPad)