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> Could we have predicted the iPhone in 2005 ?

depends on what you mean by predict. It was pretty obvious that phone/data would be added to PDAs soon. It might not have been obvious that Apple would do it so well and take PDAs from a geek/niche thing to the mainstream.

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> It was pretty obvious that phone/data would be > added to PDAs soon.

Indeed. I had a Handspring Visor with the cellular add-on in 2000. And then there were the Palm Treos, awesome PDAs plus phones with a thriving app ecosystem. What Apple did was add a touch rather than a stylus interface. And the rest is history.

Yes ,i meant the iPhone as something Apple built.

At that time the iPod was hugely successful. Phones got more and more features very quickly: web/wap browsers, e-mail, cameras, installable games. The Motorola ROKR was the first try at combining an iPod with a phone. It failed. Back then everybody was expecting an iPodPhone in the near future.

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