As the world bids farewell to feature phones, new look gadgets generally referred to as smartphones are taking over the void. IBM Simon, a PDA launched in 1994, is said to be the device that ushered in the touch screen phones of the 21st Century.
Simon, as IBM would call it, was introduced by BellSouth Cellular, designed and built by IBM. Being the first device to use cellular technology, Simon retailed at $900.
Measuring 8 x 2.5 x1.5 inches, IBM Simon boasted of an x86-compatible CPU, a fax modem, a PCMCIA Type II PC Card slot, 11 built-in programs, and a 4 1/2- by 1 1/2-inch touch sensitive LCD screen.
It also ran on the Datalight ROM-DOS operating system.
The device is a part of a collection of of pen computing, pointing devices, touch technologies by Bill Buxton, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research.
Simon’s reign was shortlived. The device was discontinued in February 1995 having produced 2000 devices. It been preceded by a 1992 IBM prototype named Angler (finally renamed to “Simon Personal Communicator”) and later succeeded by a phone code named Neon.
According to a 2012 infographic by GO-Gulf.com, 5 billions phones are in active use across the globe out of which 1.08 billion are smartphones.
And while smartphone usage continues to grow especially in Africa, factors such as affordability, data and improved mobile features remain key to the increase in penetration.
IBM Simon unveiled the smartphone revolution almost 2 decades ago and as Gartner predicts, smartphones might just dominate that space by 2014.
