A look at the timeline leading to today’s ubiquitous smartphone

To truly appreciate the charmed history of the smartphone, you need to go all the way back to 1992, when IBM came up with the Simon phone. The gadget was ahead of its time in many ways: it features a touchscreen, operable via a stylus, and allowed users to both send and receive fax messages. It might sound funny now, but the concept behind the phone was aligned with the technology of the time, explains innovation expert Peter Zieve.

Image source: faxfx.net

There’s no question that the Simon is the first smartphone is history. It also had an email client and a built-in notepad. Sadly, the phone didn’t do as well as the then tech giant expected, as the world wasn’t ready for it and its steep price. Ericsson continued what the Simon started and was the brand to actually coin the term “smartphone” with the release of its GS88 in 1997.

Nokia was still the king of the industry, though, and its Nokia 9500 Communicator in 2001 was the first smartphone to come with a color screen. The Communicator had been widely popular even in earlier iterations, and the company’s trademark Symbian OS remained the leading smartphone operating system until the late 2010s. Yet, even then, this was fast being rivaled by the Windows CE, Blackberry, and Palm OS.

Everything changed with the arrival of Apple’s iPhone in 2007, drastically altering the landscape of the smartphone industry and giving rise to loyal Apple users that continue today, despite Apple’s history of outrageous pricing. However, another industry giant in Google had been busy coming up with what is today the industry standard for any non-iPhone user: the Android OS. Korean company Samsung has since been the industry leader in this new market, but its reign is slowly being questioned by Chinese manufacturers like Vivo, Huawei, Xiaomi, and OnePlus, concludes Peter Zieve.

Peter Zieve is an inventor, innovator, educator, and the founder and CEO of aerospace automation company Electroimpact, Inc. He has 23 patents under his name. For related reads, visit this blog.