The IBM Simon Personal Communicator was an advanced cellular telephone, created by a joint venture between IBM and BellSouth. Simon was first shown as a product concept in 1992[1] at COMDEX, the computer and technology trade show held in Las Vegas, Nevada. Launched in 1993[2] it combined the features of a mobile phone, a pager, a PDA, and a fax machine. After some delays it was sold by BellSouth in 1994 in 190 U.S. cities in 15 states and was originally priced at $899.[3]
Besides a mobile phone, the major applications were a calendar, address book, world clock, calculator, note pad, e-mail, and games. It had no physical buttons to dial with. Instead customers used a touchscreen to select phone numbers with a finger or create facsimiles and memos with an optional stylus. Text was entered with either a unique "predictive" on-screen keyboard or QWERTY keyboard. The Simon had an optional PCMCIA memory card.