1) Why did most of the early PDA companies fail, even if they had innovative and sophisticated product design?

Many of the early PDA companies failed mainly due of lack of funding in which many of these companies dissolved all of their money thinking the market had a need for it. In fact, these first movers did develop an innovative and sophisticated product but they did not thoroughly research the market. Assuming that consumers would want to learn and value the PDA was a huge mistake when there was not necessarily a need or want for it. Additionally, they failed to wait for developments in several technical areas such as battery life and size, memory power, modem size, and software functionality.

2) Could early PDA companies have done anything differently to survive? It is hard to say whether or not if these early PDA companies could have survived if they had done things differently. First and foremost, these companies should have planned to more for the financial aspect of the processing and development of PDAs because as with any new product the development costs are high. Perhaps these early PDA companies could have succeeded by doing joint ventures or mergers to help offset the cost as well as having more creativity flowing and technology knowledge. Also, these early movers could have waited to be early followers to avoid the bulk of the research and development expenses for the PDAs (p. 96). Lastly, these PDA companies should have focused on creating a more specialized device in a vertical market that consumers could have benefited from such as the PalmPilot.
3) Why was Palm successful where so many others had failed? From my point of view, Palm was so successful while others failed because they entered the game as a late entrant by taking advantage of the failures of early movers. Palm truly understood what the consumer wanted by researching and accurately evaluating its target market. Additionally, Palm brought a better yet less complex design at a cheaper cost and more convenient to satisfy the customers. Furthermore, with Palm also willing to work with others by gaining thousands of developers, and being acquired by another company.

4) Was being late to the smart phone market a disadvantage for Apple? What factors enabled Apple to successfully enter when it did? Apple entering the smart phone market was more so an advantage than a disadvantage. In fact, Apple took the smart phone market by storm and changing the course of market expectations unlike other late entrants- the iPhone had a sleek design and wide array of features that surpassed first