[Terretta]

Had one of first Compaq iPaq GPRS sleeves, ordered directly from Hong Kong before US availability. (Late 2001, early 2002.) And Handango was my "app store" of choice.

The 5 years from 2002 to 2007 were interesting, but in hindsight seem to share so little with post iPhone industry.

[ekianjo]

It clearly did not reach critical mass at that time. There were a number of obstacles to adoption - devices were powerful enough to do things, but compatibility with office software was not well built-in (If I remember correctly you could not synchronize emails with Outlook right out of the box). But third party applications were often very good and feature-plenty. The media players were especially capable and well designed.

It was however, impossible to upgrade the software at that time (the OS), which rendered your device obsolete every time a major WindowsMobile version was released. This is happening again with Android and I can't say this is a very good idea.