Killer handheld tools

The Palm was almost the first killer handheld tool.  As a glorified datebook / contact manager, it ran out of steam fairly quickly.

Blackberry was the first real killer handheld.  It married the power of email (the first killer network app) with a phone, and did it so well that you bought the thing just for that.  As a professional tool, it still has legs, though its reached the end of its consumer market.

iPod was the next.  It married your Walkman / mp3 player with access to online music.  No more disks.  It did it so well, you bought it just for that.

iPhone was an easy next step.  It married your iPod to your phone to a bunch of mini-apps.  Truly revolutionary.  It was also brilliant as a build-on strategy for iPod: even if you don't want the phone, you might still want some of the apps.

The Kindle is a hot tool right now, but you wonder whether reading books will be a narrow market like contact management.  Amazon (the book web site) with Kindle is functionally the same as iTunes with iPod.  The question is whether Amazon has an iPhone up its sleeve, which would bring the hammer down on all the wannabes.  Amazon's iPhone might not necessarily be a product; it could also be a service.  I just don't see what that is, though I suppose if I did, I would have a much different position in life.

A lot of phones are trying to marry themselves to online apps, again looking for that iPod + iTunes magic combo.  That was a big selling point of the Palm Pre, with its Facebook connection.  Dave Winer suggests a Twitter camera.  These are all well and good, but in the age of mini-apps, it's hard for a single company to defeat the rest of the market.  As long as Facebook and Twitter remain independent, a single vendor will have difficulty obtaining an advantage.  Apple owned iTunes.

Google has the best shot.  They have a very hot set of online applications -- email, docs.  They have the hottest OS, which means more features and more mini-apps.  And they have their own phones, which will work seamlessly with their products.  So, they own the whole chain, which they can turn into a great user experience.

Squeezing into this mix is the upcoming Apple Tablet.  I suspect this will mostly be an iMac tablet notebook with lots of multi-touch.  Is that enough to make it a winner?  As a build-on strategy to iPhone, it's a good chance to take, and this is the time to do it.  But with Android coming on strong, iPhone may not have the coattails.