A bit more than seven years ago, most people used feature phones, a few used some other not so smart thing called handhelds, the most popular: Palm, HP IPaq, and of course, blackberry they were expensive, the mobile internet was bad at that time and of course, you can’t install apps on those things.
Then the smartphones era became true, although there may be a few attempts before, the true star and the one that deserves the credit here is the iPhone, a mobile device that sucks too, you couldn’t install apps and the original intention was to use web apps, but it make using email, browsing, using a contact list, taking pictures and listening to music in a mobile device a charm. (Sorry Nokia, your NXXX weren’t that good).