IBM Simon Personal Communicator Release

IBM officially released the Simon Personal Communicator, a device that combined a mobile phone with PDA features, including a touchscreen, email, fax, and a calendar. It sold about 50,000 units.

Significance

It was the first device explicitly marketed as a 'smartphone' (though the term was coined later) and demonstrated the feasibility of integrating telephony and personal computing in a single handheld device, laying the conceptual groundwork for future smartphones.