Comment by Eric_WVGG
6 hours ago
Apple was considered very late to the smartphone game at the time.
Windows CE was introduced on PDAs around 1996, and was on phones by 2003, so the iPhone was arguably between four and eleven years late depending on how you define the space.
Microsoft’s dominance was a safe bet because they had never really failed to dominate any market at that point in history. Also nobody imagined that the size of the mobile market would eclipse laptops, so “Windows CE already won” wasn’t an absurd statement at all.
I guess it's just hard for me to consider those even "smartphones" with such small screens without capacitive multi-touch and with web browsers that didn't work properly on so many websites, at least compared to safari on the iPhone.
And even other factors like the music and videos was so poor, granted they were built for business use which didn't really need a good media consumption experience.
I suggest you watch the original iPhone video launch - Steve compares the iPhone with the existing smartphones of the time.
You’re taking for granted that we know how things panned out in hindsight. A complete touch screen phone with no fixed buttons at that time seemed nuts.