Smartphones To ‘Disappear’ by 2021: New Study Offers Fascinating Insights
A new study carried out by experts based in Sweden has predicted the end of the “smartphone era” by 2021, suggesting that the trend will cease to exist in the next five years owing to the emergence of a host of innovative lifestyle alternatives for the future consumer.
The study amassed feedback from nearly 150,000 customers predominantly in Sweden but also from several other participating countries, documenting their views on anticipated technology-driven trends for the future. The study was carried out on behalf of Ericsson. According to participating researcher Rebecka Cedering Angstrom, artificial assistants could alternatively aid users to “multi-task,” as well as assist them in their respective professions.
“A smartphone in the hand, it’s really not that practical. For example, not when one is driving a car or cooking. And there are many situations where display screens are not so good. Therefore, one in two think that smartphones will belong to the past within five years.
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“Just imagine watching football and being able to choose from where you want to see the game from different places in the stands, or perhaps even from the pitch. Shopping is also an area where you could [virtually] try on shoes and see how they fit on your own feet.”
The study also revealed that the customer of the future is likely to be more inclined toward instigating change in services acquired via technology as opposed to spontaneously abandoning the companies that provide them. It also reveals that (AI) Artificial intelligence will enable expedient interaction with objects without the need for a smartphone screen. The findings show that one in two smartphone users are convinced that smartphones will be “a thing of the past” over the next five years.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is defined as the assumed “intelligence” exhibited by machines or software in the tasks and interactions. After years of consistent breakthroughs, 2015 is said to be a ground-breaking year for AI with an extensive myriad of forward-thinking firms namely Google subscribing to it and leading the march with a multitude of AI-driven projects this year.
According to two recent Oxford-initiated studies, a meticulously conducted skill-analysis for 700 different occupations has uncovered that advances in the field of artificial intelligence will render human labor redundant at a surprisingly unprecedented pace. It concluded that “robots” are likely to take over 47 percent of today’s jobs within a few decades.
The smartphone concept is known to have been conceived decades ago, but that idea was realized more than 20 years ago with the advent of IBM’s Simon Personal Communicator in 1992. Nokia subsequently arrived on the scene in 1996 introducing its Nokia 9000 Communicator. However, the term “smartphone” was introduced a year later, with Ericsson launching the GS 88 concept. While the rest of the world was still powerfully inclined towards basic cell phone technology, Japan pioneered the mainstream smartphone concept.
Originally, smartphones were products intended for business firms needing to stay more attuned to innovative engineering but later attracted the consumer market in the mid-2000s. This led to a dramatic acceleration in smartphone usage with revolutionary devices like BlackBerry 8700, the Samsung BlackJack, Palm Treos, and the Motorola Q dominating the airwaves among others.
According to the report, among the top consumer trends for 2016 and beyond, (AI) Artificial Intelligence will render the use of smartphones superfluous by bringing about the end of the “screen age”. Other trends set to dominate the technology spectrum in the immediate future include enhanced lifestyle network trends, augmented and virtual reality, personalized commuting, smart housing, emergency chats, body sensors and the emergence of autonomous vehicles, and last but not least, prodigiously enhanced consumer power.
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