Like Bill Gates, I too coveted mobile hardware that I could connect to all of my favorite online resources. Ten years ago I was low on cash since I was a college junior who was still living with Mom. At the end of that summer, I bought my first Linux desktop with what little I could earn from the internship. Surely I thought that Mr. Gates would beat me to it, with the 3 billion he swore he would spend on making such a device.
Two years later, I went back to full time work. Then I decided to buy the best solution that I could afford: a Samsung SCH 3500. This thing had a “microbrowser.” Microbrowser did not even begin to describe the experience of trying to experience the world wide web via a 1″ monochrome LCD. Most websites, were downright painful to use but Yahoo! had made their search, maps, and email usable: as long as you could tolerate numberpad word-bubblesort text entry. The data was crazy expensive too with no monthly quota. The cool thing is that you could tether it with a Handspring Visor with PalmOS. When the Samsung and the Handspring were connected, you could use the phone as a serial modem to dial out to any dialup isp. On the wonderful 3 inch monochrome Handspring screen, I could browse the web and even IRC with with the sudo-handwriting PalmOS Graffiti. Sure it was ugly but it was bleeding edge. Microsoft was no where to be found in this market space in 2002. Yahoo! was doing software as a service on the mobile platform long before Google was even dreaming about it.
I really loved this hardware. Sadly the Samsung died in 2004 and I moved on to other phones, continuing to covet the dream of voice-activated computing which would give me access to all of my information in my pocket.
Five years after Bill Gates’ fateful promise, Microsoft still lacked any market in software-as-a-service voice-activated pocket computing area. Likewise, on June 30, 2011, Microsoft will lack majority market share.
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