Brian Dolan points out Why “PDA” is no longer appropriate, but „Smartphone“ may by the wrong term either:
A new report from Forrester Research analyst Ian Fogg suggests that the term “smartphone” is no longer helpful because it fails to describe any discernible grouping of today’s increasingly “smart” handsets. Many in the healthcare industry still believe the term “PDA” to be a worthwhile constituent of their everyday vocabulary, even though personal digital assistants could include everything from a mobile phone, a handheld video game console and — soon enough — next-generation digital cameras.
“A PDA was essentially a mini-computer that was a pocket-sized device,” Fogg told mobiheathnews in a recent interview. “‘PDA’ was a category of devices that basically got killed by the mobile phone in the early 2000s, because the main thing consumers used that device category for was address book, calendar and maybe email. Those things fit naturally into today’s mobile phones.”