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by castell 3777 days ago
Bill Gates called it the "Wallet PC", back in 1994. Later Pen-based computing. Later "Pocket PC".
3 comments

Bill's description was pretty spot on too. I read The Road Ahead again recently and he was right about a lot of things. Though even with all that prescience Microsoft still missed the boat a number of things they saw coming a mile away.
Pocket PC still sounds nice, but Apple's marketing efforts caused the meaning of the word to become unclear. Pocket computer is perhaps the most neutral term available.

For the average consumer this semantic discussion won't change their perception of those devices though. The masses for now have settled on the three categories of smartphone, tablet, and laptop/desktop computer.

(Even more frustrating is that every piece of software, service, and website you use on those devices, and in some countries even a text message is called simply app.)

By 1994, "PC" had already shifted from being platform neutral to referring to the IBM-compatibles with Microsoft OSs. So a name with "PC" in it wasn't likely to stick as the platform-neutral label for the mobile segment.