The Idea: Tablet Computing

Then: Tablet PC 
Tablets may seem like the newest, biggest thing, but Bill Gates actually unveiled Microsoft’s Tablet PC, which had undergone a decade of development, at Comdex back in 2000. Gates touted its ability to handle all the functions of a PC in an easier-to-use, more portable format, as well as its new features like handwriting recognition. But sales of the Tablet PC were low. Nevertheless, Gates frequently maintained in interviews and speeches that tablets were the next wave in computing. You can’t say he was wrong

Now: Tablets
If it seems like tablets are everywhere, wait until 2015. Forrester Research predicts that 82.1 percent of people in the United States will be using them by 2015. Even more remarkably, tablets have created their own market space, somewhere between smartphones and laptops. The market instigator was theApple iPad, which accounts for 94 percent of online tablet traffic in the United States, with devices running OSes from Google, Microsoft, and RIM dividing what’s left, according to comScore.

The Idea: Smartphone

Now: Apple iPhone
What once seemed remarkable—the ability to call anybody from anywhere—soon became not enough, as more and more was demanded of cell phones. First-generation smartphones blended PDA and email functionality into the texting and call capability of cell phones. The game changer was the Apple iPhone. With the addition of apps and a touchscreen, innumerable tasks were at users’ fingertips. Smartphones are set to reach 472 million shipments this year, fourfold growth over the entire mobile phone market, according to an IDC report.