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by Stewart Wolpin on April 22, 2009
Remember when desktop PCs ruled and laptops weighed 20 pounds? Today, notebooks outsell desktop PCs by more than two to one, and are in more than half of all U.S. homes.
Remember when a portable phone was something only the elite used in a car? Today, cell phones outsell landline phones five to one, and are in 91 percent of homes. In fact, according to Nielsen, by the end of this year 20 percent of all U.S. homes will be cell phone–only.
At the same time, MP3 players—which have 46 percent penetration—have made Sony Walkman CD players a distant memory, and digital cameras—which have 77 percent penetration—have literally forced one-time industry giants like Polaroid to file for bankruptcy.
Just as impressive as these numbers are the minds of the inventors who conceived of these groundbreaking products and brought them to life, as well as what they think of both today’s and tomorrow’s versions. These four seminal models transformed modern technologies from nebulous ideas to innovative successes.
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