I believe there were many in Japan - including products like small laptop-shaped electronic dictionaries - but that's Japan. Their homegrown cell phones have recently picked up the moniker "Galapagos phones" because they tended to develop country-specific features and rarely leave to other markets. The same can be said for their micro/portable laptops of the early 2000s.

One could argue that OLPC made people outside of Japan aware that the form factor was possible and even optimal for some users.