Switched On: Mined the gap

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

At the introduction of the iPad, Steve Jobs showed a simple slide illustrating one of the burning questions in the industry for many years. On the left was a smartphone. On the right was a laptop. And in the middle was a gap. Apple, like many companies in the PC industry, was seeking to create a product that filled this gap. Indeed, the iPad itself reflects elements of the Apple devices that flank it. Its enclosure resembles the silver metallic enclosure of a MacBook Pro, but inside, it has the ARM processor architecture and operating system of the iPhone.

But the iPad is but the latest in a long line of products and would-be general-purpose devices that seeks to fill this gap, most of them short-lived. Some of the more recent ones include the aborted Palm Foleo, the Sony Mylo, Nokia Internet Tablets, UMPCs, and MIDs. Why are so many companies convinced there is opportunity in these products?

Let’s turn back the clock to 2002, the year Handspring launched its first smartphone, the monochrome 160 x 160-pixel Treo 180. It was the year that Verizon Wireless launched the first 3G network in the U.S. and the year MobileStar declared bankruptcy after deploying public Wi-Fi throughout many Starbucks locations in 2001. In 2002, PC World awarded its World Class Award for ultralight notebooks to the Fujitsu LifeBook P-2000. It was less than three pounds and had a 10.6-inch screen, but was 1.6-inches thick and had a starting price of $1,499. And it couldn’t access Facebook, Hulu, YouTube or Engadget — because they didn’t exist.

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Switched On: Mined the gap originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 06 Feb 2010 11:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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