Articles like this gloss over how small tweaks to a product put it in a different category, with large commercial consequences. In the case of smartphones, having a mobile network radio is a very large difference in capabilities, price, operating cost and channel. Smartphones are the largest business on the planet and growing, and tablets have stumbled for not having met their potential in displacing enough PCs in office productivity use cases. Smaller distinctions are important within the smartphone and tablet markets, like &quot;phablets&quot; and various size and price categories for tablets, and for not-quite-tablets like &quot;convertibles.&quot; Microsoft tried and failed in multiple product generations to turn PCs into tablets, while in Windows CE and NETCF they had the basic formula for a modern smartphone but they treated NETCF like a red headed stepchild. Small differences, big results.