Grafitti was just a throw-away example, I wouldn't have actually banked on that either. I disagree that the slate is what the "market wanted", it's what Apple

Grafitti was just a throw-away example, I wouldn't have actually banked on that either. I disagree that the slate is what the "market wanted", it's what Apple told them they wanted, which is a very polished skill of Apple. Apple consistently sets their marketing apart, and many/most other vendors follow up with "me too" products and marketing. I don't recall seeing any of the keyboard/trackball type phones really truly pushing and standing behing those products as a "THIS is what you want" type of marketing. It's kind of like Apple stakes out a claim and defends it vehemently with their product marketing. Many other vendors try something and kinda say "we think you might want to consider this", but they don't seem to truly own and embrace their own decisions. Apple basically ignores everything else and puts out their own concepts. I don't see this as much from other companies, though I do try to really look and keep an open mind. I personally think that an elegantly designed and marketed keyboard phone could have been a solid iPhone rival, maybe even still could. I had that first Motorola Droid, but the software truly sucked at the time. Email client was lame, didn't support signatures at all. The keyboard was OK, but not great. The OS consistently fumbled switching between soft and physical keyboard by throwing away whatever you were typing. So, I don't think the "market" rejected the early keyboard phones as much as they rejected to overall state of those devices at the time relative to iOS.