---
title: "Which came first, Amazon or the iPhone?"
description: "Amazon vs the iPhone: Amazon came first, by 13 years — 1994 against 2007. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/amazon-vs-iphone/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, Amazon or the iPhone?

**Which came first, Amazon or the iPhone?: Amazon**

1994 — 13 years before the iPhone

Amazon came first, by 13 years. Jeff Bezos incorporated the company in Washington state.

## Side by side

|  | Amazon | the iPhone |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1994 | 2007 |
| Date | 1994-07-05 | 2007-06-29 |
| Category | technology | technology |
| What happened | Jeff Bezos incorporated the company in Washington state. | The first iPhone went on sale after a January announcement. |

## Amazon

Amazon was incorporated on 5 July 1994, originally as Cadabra, and the website opened in July 1995 selling only books. The 1994 incorporation date is used here because it is the company's own founding date; if you mean the shop, 1995 is the answer. Either way it predates Google by three or four years and eBay by about a year.

## the iPhone

Announced on 9 January 2007 and on sale from 29 June, the first iPhone had no app store, no copy and paste, no 3G and no video recording. The App Store arrived over a year later in July 2008. Android Inc. had been founded in 2003, four years before the iPhone, but the first Android phone shipped fifteen months after it.

## Common questions

### Which came first, Amazon or the iPhone?

Amazon, by 13 years — 1994 against 2007.

### When did Amazon start?

1994. Jeff Bezos incorporated the company in Washington state.

### When did the iPhone start?

2007. The first iPhone went on sale after a January announcement.

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## Sources

- Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (https://www.wikidata.org/) [CC0 1.0]