---
title: "Which came first, the iPhone or TikTok?"
description: "the iPhone vs TikTok: the iPhone came first, by 9 years — 2007 against 2016. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/iphone-vs-tiktok/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, the iPhone or TikTok?

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

2007 — 9 years before TikTok

the iPhone came first, by 9 years. The first iPhone went on sale after a January announcement.

## Side by side

|  | the iPhone | TikTok |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 2007 | 2016 |
| Date | 2007-06-29 | — |
| Category | technology | technology |
| What happened | The first iPhone went on sale after a January announcement. | ByteDance launched Douyin in China; TikTok followed abroad in 2017. |

## 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.

## TikTok

The app launched in China as Douyin in September 2016 and internationally as TikTok in 2017. What made it global was the 2018 acquisition and merger of Musical.ly, a lip-sync app that had launched in 2014 and already had a large Western user base — so part of TikTok is two years older than TikTok. Douyin and TikTok remain separate apps on separate infrastructure.

## Common questions

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

the iPhone, by 9 years — 2007 against 2016.

### When did the iPhone start?

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

### When did TikTok start?

2016. ByteDance launched Douyin in China; TikTok followed abroad in 2017.

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## Sources

- Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (https://www.wikidata.org/) [CC0 1.0]
- Typical range compiled from manufacturer specifications — At One Place (/about/)