It’s a fluke of history that Apple turned into the world’s most profitable company. It didn’t have to be this way.
PDAs have been around since the 1980s, but they were clunky and had small screens until the Apple Newton in 1993. The Apple Newton lasted until 1998 and was replaced with the far inferior iPod in 2002. This gave Palm time to build on the strength of the Apple Newton and grow a highly successful business, which lasted until the iPhone was released. If Steve Jobs had built on the Newton instead of shelving it when he was brought back as CEO, Palm would not have had the opportunity to grow like it did in the 2000s.
With Apple out of the picture, Palm became the dominant player in PDAs, and Blackberry became the dominant smartphone player.
iPods before the iPod touch were good, but they were not significantly better than other MP3 players of the era. Apple did not have a significant edge.
Palm had everything it needed to become a trillion-dollar company in the 2000s. It had smartphones and PDAs, but it did not combine them into one device. So, while Palm was busy working on their PDA devices, they did not see the now obvious opportunity to combine them. The last few Palm devices released had a full touchscreen, but they didn’t add phone functionality.
Blackberry had its standard setup at the time, with the full tactile keyboard. But they did not innovate past their original design until it was too late.
I believe that in 2005 Palm was the company best set to become the dominant smartphone manufacturer. Apple was out of the PDA market until the iPod touch was released, Microsoft was busy releasing Windows Vista, and the opportunity was there.
But Palm missed it.
It’s easy to imagine Palm releasing a version of the Palm TX with phone functionality in 2005 and changing the world.
But they just didn’t do it.
So today iPhone is the most popular phone in the world.