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Those markets indeed existed, but Apple introduced products that made a lot of money causing other companies to have a go at it.

I can't name a single pre-iPad tablet. Hell, I only saw one once and it was stored away. After the iPad dozens of tablets have been introduced.

Same for the media player market.

Smart phones was already a big money business, but most if not all smart phones weren't very good or smart. The iPhone lit the market up.

Yes, Apple did indeed introduce products which made a lot of money. That was previously recognized but entering into a market and being successful is not the same as creating a new market.

Pre-Ipad tablets, all those laptop "convertables" with the screen that spins and folds back fall into this category. panasonic has had pure tablet form factors for a while now as have other's. Simply put; the Ipad was not the first tablet form factor device regardless of if one remembers the other's or not.

Pre-Ipod? The creative Zen was popular in it's time. Sony has mp3 players out. Nomad was another. The list of no-name mp3 players puts a long tail ont he end. Again, not remembering what came before the Ipod may indicate it's success in the market but again, the portable music player and portable digital music player markets where alive and well long before Apple's marketing re-wrote history.

Smart phones? Realy, You don't remember the WinCE, Palm Treo and Blackberry phones previous to the Iphone launch? Merging the PDA and cell phone into a single device was well under way before even rumours that Apple was going to make a phone (everyone remember how far fetched that sounded?).

I think claiming that you can't remember a single tablet, portable media player or smartphone previous to Apple's product launches is either grossly disengenious or potentially authentic if you've only been aware of the gadget market for the last three years.

They essentially created the market by making it popular and profitable ... creation in this sense shouldn't be taken 100% literally.

These markets would have still been niche if Apple had not entered them and dominated them.

Edited 2011-07-28 20:51 UTC

lucas_maximus,

"These markets would have still been niche if Apple had not entered them and dominated them."

Hypothetically, why exactly do you think consumer tablets would not have occurred without apple?


It seems to be the direction we were headed in anyways, with the technological advancements of lower power cpus, better battery life, all round lower costs, much cheaper data plans, the time seemed ripe for tablets to become popular. I really wanted a tablet nearly a decade ago, but I baulked at the prices at the time. I am positive that I wasn't alone. In my opinion price has always been the main barrier to mass adoption. We just needed to wait for moores law to kick in and put them at price points consumers were comfortable with.

Edited 2011-07-29 00:41 UTC