The future of smartphones in one word: meh

Didn’t smartphones used to be exciting? Not any longer, says Ed Owen. As the latest release from Apple shows, the excitement of the industry has drained away as the devices cross over to the mainstream. So where next?

Last week you may have noticed the latest releases from Apple – a selection of mobile phones that are more powerful that many desktop or laptop PCs, unveiled in the least exciting major technology release of recent times.

Probably the biggest excitement came from one of the phones coming in gold (actually it’s just gold plastic or something), but other than that, the big story was a massive increase in processing power.

Thrilled?

All the ‘surprises’ were accurately predicted by leaks in the weeks and months coming up to the launch, but were not terribly exciting in the first place. Smartphones all do what you need them to now the market has been clearly defined by Apple. Android manufacturers like HTC or Samsung, and even Microsoft’s Nokia make devices you could happily use to achieve exactly the same thing.

But it is the end of exciting and interesting developments from smartphone manufacturers. Smartphones. Are. Over.

This is not an argument about Apple’s market share. Apple has owned the premium end of the market and continues to do so – the phones will be a great success in spite of their high price. This is an argument about excitement, which is lacking in the whole sector.

As a consumer, I would have thought that a decent typing system and battery life would be the priority for Apple, but no – it’s bonkers processing power. If I was a marketer, I would probably want an NFC chip to allow marketing handshakes and payments and such. Again, not happening – probably because this would further reduce battery life from ‘poor’ to ‘unacceptable’.

That smartphones are now officially over is not to denigrate the amazing things achieved by companies like Apple and Samsung in developing their products, but a logical conclusion to the development of this market.

How long ago is it since a computer was ‘cool’? Or for that matter a phone, a camera, a car, a pair of glasses, (tip – nobody ‘cool’ uses the word ‘cool’. Proof: Jeremy Clarkson has a whole ‘cool wall’ in his car programme)? Quite some time I would say. The smartphone is the latest in a line of technology innovations that have evolved to become humdrum.

The smartphone market grew on the back of the launch of the original iPhone in 2007. Widely expected to be a flop, it actually made a lot of sense – combining four separate devices into one neat package: the phone, the iPod, the camera and the internet browser. It was an instant success, making Apple into the company it is today – a very big one.

Actually the original camera was dreadful and the package didn’t really sing until the launch of the 3GS two years later, when it had evolved into a device completely beyond anything else on the market and something highly desirable.

The last really good gimmick in a smartphone launch was Siri on the release of the iPhone 4S in 2011. Since then we have had a steady flow of increasingly powerful but dull devices from a dwindling number of manufacturers.

All of these devices can do the same things with ease – share grumpy cat pictures on Facebook? Check. Watch TV on the Tube? Check. Take pictures? With mixed results but of a high resolution? Check. Speak to someone of the phone? Apparently.

We will certainly not stop buying smart mobile phones. The reverse is true – half the adult UK population will own a smartphone in 2013 and this proportion is increasing. Many of those with smartphones are moving onto their third or fourth iteration, with many more buying for the first time.

This market is growing strongly. What has died is the excitement and differentiation in the market.

The new Apple releases exemplify this – beautiful, well-crafted devices that use more of their awesome processing power to watch the latest cat pictures, Segway fails and Miley Cyrus memes than the combined supercomputers used by NASA to navigate a man to the moon in 1969 (we never seem to hear about the computers that brought those men back from the moon again).

The impact of these devices and subsequent innovations by Google and others cannot be underestimated, driving a fundamental change in the way we consume media and interrelate to one another through these little black mirrors. This innovation also brought some really impressive technology companies like Nokia and Blackberry, and giant media companies like Tribune to their knees.

But it’s over. The multitude of smart devices today do very much more than those early iPhones, and are like technological Swiss-army knives that can tackle various digital tasks with a flick of the finger. Like the Swiss-army knife, the initial excitement has waned to so much meh.

Has anyone said to you ‘Check out my phone’, or ‘Check this app’ recently? Of course not. They all do the same thing – what’s the point? Many of these devices even look the same.

Look on the other side of the technological curtain, however, and you see something different. Because more and more people have drifted to smartphones and are now online and available ALL THE TIME, you can potentially advertise to them pretty much all the time too.

If you need any more proof, check the attitude of Facebook, which has voted with its feet and decided that is it a mobile company, and surprised almost everyone by actually achieving this goal quicker than you can say ‘Twitter IPO’.

After consumers got their digital Swiss-army knives, the advertising industry is the beneficiary of the mobile revolution. But it is the last piece of the mobile revolution to fall into place, and has proved a rather difficult thing to achieve. The market is fragmented and inconsistent, making coherent messages brands are so fond of a real headache.

Also, consumers like their phones, and may well be rather annoyed by the prospect of advertising on their device, which reflects them and is so much a part of them. Perhaps now that consumers have fallen in love with their phones so much, they could be alienated from them all over again?

Follow Ed Owen on Twitter – @ededowen.