Fun with Incorrect Predictions

I just finished reading “The New Positioning” by Jack Trout. It was a fun, quick read that provided several salient points on positioning a company and/or product line. The book, published in 1996, included several of the authors predictions about different markets and categories. Of course, it is much more interesting to make a prediction than say nothing at all but I particularly enjoyed this incorrect prediction:

Consider the problems that Apple encountered with the introduction of their Newton, a product they called a “PDA.”
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PDA, or personal digital assistant, is not a category. Nor is there much hope in its becoming a category. (Pretty Damned Abstract is one tongue-in-check definition of PDA.)

We all know that PDAs did turn out to be successful (not the Newton) and that the name PDA stuck.