What killed PDAs?
In 1996 Nokia introduced its first mobile phone with the full functionality of a PDA, the 9000 Communicator, which became very popular and gave birth to a new category of gadgets.
In 2002 RIM (Research in Motion) launched its first BlackBerry smartphone.
Thus, smartphones began to gradually oust PDAs from the market.
Actually, hardly anyone knows for sure what the difference between smartphones and communicators is. And indeed, this classification is very relative. Both this categories represent devices combining the functionality of a PDA and a mobile phone. Communicators are sooner PDAs with built-in mobile phones, and smartphones are mobile phones featuring the full functionality of a PDA. More often communicators are bigger and heavier than smartphones, their screens are wider, and usually they have both a touchscreen and a physical QWERTY keyboard.
By 2004 it had already became clear that the PDA format is not needed anymore. Laptops were getting lighter, cheaper and more productive, and many people switched to them. And those who needed a really small pocket computer preferred smartphones and communicators combining the functions of a mobile phone and a PDA. The sales of palmtops started to fall off in leaps and bounds.In 2007 Palm decided to stop the production of PDAs and to focus on its smartphone OS instead. The same year Apple introduced its first iPhone. And that marked the decline of ‘personal digital assistants’ as we had known them before.