When you say smartphones are in a downturn, you mean sales correct? Not the number in use. Just want to be sure because smartphones, I believe, aren’t going anywhere soon. More people own them now than ever before. It’s not like people are going to go back to only using a desktop.
Yes sales. What typically happens in a tech market with a new product is like this:
1) Lots of hype everyone buys one. Uptake of product. Premium product focus. High upgrade cycle (was about 2 years)
2) Saturation is met. Everyone who will own one has one. Premium markets slump. People buy cheaper products. Price point competition. Reduced upgrade cycle (now about 4-5 years), currently midrange is the energy market, but eventually it will be budget.
One thing about a reduced level of relevant innovation is that it becomes easier and easier to imitate. Hard to make a copy of a flagship on first release. 5 years later, when all the components are readily available, it becomes pretty easy.
I knew we would reach saturation a few years ago, at some point in the future. It took longer than I thought, but we have finally reached saturation in developed markets. That means, long term, it's game over for the "boom" of premium devices.
What a boom it was! unprecedented tech adoption rates.
They'll still sell, but nowhere near as many, and OEMs will have to look for the next big thing, the new wave to catch. And they'll try and sell tingle dongles, widgets and other useless gimmicks. And also many will enter into budget devices.
I think this is compounded in particular with phones because of diminishing returns. It's more like say, the TV market, than the PC market. With PCs there is ever more demanding applications - video editing, gaming, music and so on. With a TV, you get to a certain point of size, and display and sound quality and you are like "okay, that's enough".
I think smartphones are pretty similar. For most people, you can only camera, and facebook so well. After that, it's slow upgrades, little fuss, price comparison, and rather like more shopping for a camera for family snaps, or a feature phone, rather than a new car, gaming rig, or VR headset. Nothing super compelling, you just want something about as competent as the last phone, screwdriver, or Bluetooth earpiece you owned.
Indeed, quite surprisingly feature phones had there first growth uptick recently in developed markets. It's thought that between developing markets, and things lifestyle minimalism, JaiOS will surpass iOS in market dominance.
With the addition of things like google assistant, google maps, social media apps - I think we might find feature phones "advance" to the point where more users are satisfied with the functionality. And smart watches, tablets and other devices may pick up the slack. I'm not sure exactly what product might fill that niche, but I feel like you could cover maybe 30 percent of users basic applications with a simple low cpu device with a few apps.
If you could make a feature phone with those apps, responsive, easy UI, and a passable camera, and cheap - after the buzz of smartphones wears off, I feel like you could see a bit of a rise in marketshare there. Just a theory.
But there are some downsides to the slab that become apparent. They are large and fragile and expensive, and you have to carry them everywhere. A fitness band might replicate enough of the functionality to save you some greif there, as could a smart feature OS. They also are sort of engrossing, and have a lot of notifications. It's not unlike having a TV blaring in your pocket. Something more quiet, more simple might suit people who want to enjoy the outdoors, their social life etc. At least for some of the time (perhaps a secondary device).
So I think beyond the economics, the development and the market theory - there's a sort of pragmatic cultural element. Now that phones are "no longer cool" to ordinary people, and sort of ho hum, what place do we want mobile tech to have in our lives. Do we want it more engrossing, like foldable tablets, AR and so on? Less engrossing, and more simple, like smart feature OSes, and smart watches?
I think that becomes an individual experience, and reflection, but with increasingly diverse mobile devices in the near future and present, I think that personal experience becomes relevant to the cultural place and market trends of portable devices.
Not unlike I suppose how culture adapted to the internet, or portable music, in the beginning theres a sort of wow. And then there's an agknowledgement of the pitfalls, the issues, and how one might navigate them.
Indeed I think to KEEP users, mobile OS giants like apple and google will have a huge push to offer "minimisation" options to users - more silent modes, time management - whatever they can come up with - essentially offering their customers a way to strip down their experience to a more basic and unobstrusive one - and on increasingly cheap devices, so that people don't jump ship to other types of mobile experience (now that feature phone OSes like JaiOS are closing the gap, and smartwatches are approaching the point where they might be viable for basic smartphone functionality)
There's also the issue of device redundancy with increasing numbers of devices. There's a computer in your thermostat, and in your car. Your friend has one. There's one at work, at school - on your desk. Your home has 5-6 maybe. Tablets, laptops, phones, all sorts. At a certain point you might feel like if one was more basic in functionality you wouldn't miss out on much. Especially once your space heater starts to respond to "hey alexa".
In that sort of climate, as time goes on, it's not so much that I think pocketable devices will die. More that they will diversify, change. The smartphone has a decade or two in it yet. But long term, I think the same thing that happened to "computers" will happen to the device that people carry with them. It will grow into a crazy ecosystem of various quite different devices.
Partly just because it will stop being the only available computer at any time, and become the only available computer, some small amount of the time - and the rest of the time, it'll just be a portal to the greater sea of computing. Eventually not being in range of some kind of smart device, or network of things will be about as frequent as being out of mobile coverage range - something that happens when you go bush, or go hiking, or visit your aging freinds in the country.
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