Ericsson ConsumerLab's new report, 10 Hot Consumer Trends for 2016, claims to represent the views of 1.1 billion people across 24 countries.
Michael Björn, Head of Research at Ericsson ConsumerLab, said: "Some of these trends may seem futuristic. But consumer interest in new interaction paradigms such as AI and virtual reality (VR), as well as in embedding the internet in the walls of homes or even in our bodies, is quite strong."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/12039813/Smartphones-to-die-out-within-five-years-says-new-study.html
I could see them getting replace by google glass type technology, but within five years seems a stretch.
>walls ... bodies
I'm not talking to either my walls or armpit, thankyouverymuch.
Quote from: littleman on December 09, 2015, 05:11:18 PM
within five years seems a stretch.
Agreed.
Let's put this in perspective - as of April 21, 2015 (with the supposed Mobilgeddon looming), 44% of websites for Fortune 500 companies were still not mobile friendly
http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/21/googles-mobile-friendly-update-could-impact-over-40-of-fortune-500/#.xvpezj:z4cQ
That is 14 years after Audi launched the first site that adapted to display size.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsive_web_design#History
And it is a lot easier to switch to a responsive template than to change an actual physical infrastructure and deeply ingrained habits. Given that until recently my phone was almost five years old, the idea that phones will "disappear" in five years is absurd. I could believe that within 5-10 years, phones will cease to innovate and phones will be more like laptops are now.
Back up a second and think about cars though.
1. I bought a new car in 2004 when gas prices were $5/gallon where I lived. Everyone was talking about fuel cells and it seemed reasonable that gas prices were on their way to $6 and $7 per gallon. I remember saying to my wife that since I kept my previous car for 10 years, I thought my 2004 Subaru *might* be my last car with an internal combustion engine (ICE). Now here it is 11 years later and living where we do - remote, frequently under chain controls, all-wheel or four-wheel drive being almost universal, there still is no decent electric option for a primary vehicle and there doesn't even seem to be one on the horizon. And though there has been some substantial innovation in ICEs, it isn't the sexy stuff that attracts media.
2. Culturally, we're already seeing a divide. My nephew, who races cars, talks about "ICE technology" (and I mean he says "ICE" not "internal combustion engine" when he speaks... it took me a while to catch up on the conversation). So whereas it was formerly assumed that car=ICE, now ICE is a thing, like phone used to mean a thing you dialed and had a line in your house, but now we talk about landlines and smartphones. It's a bad analogy though because landlines are a way of providing service and smartphones are merely a form factor (frequently used in some capacity over a landline).
3. The ICE may go away within 20 years, but the car won't. Similarly I still have, between home and office and rental, three landlines. Two I pay for personally. The smartphone hasn't killed the landline. Wearables and Embeddables will not kill the smartphone in the next decade, but it may happen in the next 20 years. In fact, I think the landline as a method of providing service will outlast the smartphone as a form factor.
So is a smartphone an ICE or a car? I think it's a ICE.
I hear people talk about their phones (specifically the photos on their phones) like this: "Those are my memories."
Question: do you want your memories on a small external device that's easy to lose, or "onboard"? I think that type of thinking is training people in fearing losing their phones and wanting to have it "onboard" in some way, first wearables, then embeddables.
Three books that for me bring this home
- the world of networked wearables: Rainbows End, Vernor Vinge (who coined the term "techological singularity")
- a world of embeddables: Pandora's Star, Peter Hamilton; Deepness in the Sky, Vernor Vinge.
I've recommended those books many times, but if you like sci-fi, they are most reads (the last two; Rainbows End more just in the context of this discussion, but not as literature per se).