[postmodest]

I suspect that without Jobs, Apple is dead by 2002. Turned into an arm of, like, RIM. Then Google comes out with the Android phone and it's all over for everyone including Microsoft.

[hylaride]

I suspect if Apple and NeXT never "merged", the phone market would be RIM vs (a very different) Android, but we'd be worse off.

Blackberries were OK at the time, but my god RIM was so culturally conservative and Google at the time had no design sense that we'd probably be 10 years behind where we are now - and if we even had software keyboards they'd be terrible.

[pjmlp]

Outside US, it would keep being all about J2ME, Symbian, Windows CE/Pocket PC, Bada OS.

Which keep being forgotten, in these kind of discussions.

[insane_dreamer]

Nokia would still be around

[aswanson]

Hard to argue with that. Still remember a co-intern telling me "Steve Jobs returned to Apple!" and just shrugging.

[nailer]

HTC G1 the original Android phone, was basically another sidekick. We’d have this shitty Android and WinMo for a decade longer and eventually things would get good.

[monocasa]

The slate form factor was already being explored by other manufacturers before the iPhone came out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada