Obama knew iPhone would be a hit from day one

President Obama gets a lot right. He gets a lot wrong, too. One thing he absolutely nailed dead-on was the success Apple's iPhone would have. In an upcoming book named Believer: My Forty Years in Politics penned by President Obama's political strategist, David Axelrod, The president had glowing things to say after a private meeting with Steve Jobs, who showed him the first iPhone well ahead of its launch. A noted BlackBerry fan, Barry seemed to understand the iPhone was going to be a huge deal form the jump.

According to Axelrod, Obama left the meeting with positive feelings about the iPhone's success. As you or I would, he also wished he could capitalize. Here's Axelrod's recollection of Obama's comments:

If it were legal, I would buy a boatload of Apple stock. This thing is going to be really big.

According to The Washington Post, Apple stock was trading at $99.02 around the time Obama saw the first iPhone, which is about $12.52 at the current split price. If Barry had dumped $400,000 in Apple that day, he'd be sitting on roughly $3.6 million right now.

Axelrod's book comes out February 10, so we'll have to wait to see if Obama had any other interesting insight on the meeting, or the first iPhone. With his second term ending next year, perhaps Obama will finally get on-board and snap up an iPhone while he enjoys retirement.

Source: 9to5Mac

Via: The Washington Post