---
title: "Which came first, the iPhone or Nintendo?"
description: "the iPhone vs Nintendo: Nintendo came first, by 118 years — 1889 against 2007. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/iphone-vs-nintendo/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, the iPhone or Nintendo?

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

1889 — 118 years before the iPhone

Nintendo came first, by 118 years. Fusajiro Yamauchi began making hanafuda playing cards in Kyoto.

## Side by side

|  | the iPhone | Nintendo |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 2007 | 1889 |
| Date | 2007-06-29 | 1889-09-23 |
| Category | technology | company |
| What happened | The first iPhone went on sale after a January announcement. | Fusajiro Yamauchi began making hanafuda playing cards in Kyoto. |

## 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.

## Nintendo

Nintendo was founded in 1889 to make handmade hanafuda cards, and it was a playing-card company for about eighty years. It is older than the Ford Motor Company (1903), older than the aeroplane, older than the Eiffel Tower by five months, and older than the modern Olympic Games. Before settling on video games in the 1970s it tried taxis, instant rice and a chain of love hotels.

## Common questions

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

Nintendo, by 118 years — 1889 against 2007.

### When did the iPhone start?

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

### When did Nintendo start?

1889. Fusajiro Yamauchi began making hanafuda playing cards in Kyoto.

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## Sources

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