Adam, Try a Bite.

Steve Jobs is promoting his new Apple cell phone. The folks I’ve read think it will be an uphill battle for Apple, since the market is already flooded with cell phones. When he succeeded marketing the iPod, a music player so portable everyone could find a pocket for it, he opened up a new market area, and succeeded bigtime. The prognosis is that Jobs will find it difficult to enter a cellphone market already crowded with novelties and ballyhoo. You may remember that “the Apple Computer” was a new idea as a desktop, and the Mac was refreshing principally because it promised us the next major tool, an operating system almost everyone could understand. And then Bill Gates’ modest entry steamrolled across Jobs’ forehead under the name of Windows. While I forecast doom for the Apple cellphone, Jobs laughs all the way to the bank. He says I was wrong about the internal combustion engine too.