Smartphones and Mobile: Ghost in the Shell

What’s going on with smartphones these days?

The smartphone slowdown
It seems like every major player is reducing, and reducing, forecasts.

Here’s the big picture:

Smartphones are effectively ex-growth.

Is mobile dead?
Many people will jump directly to the conclusion that mobile is dead.

But…

MOBILE > smartphones

Mobile is much, much, much bigger than smartphones. More specifically, the value has clearly moved up the stack from the phones themselves to how we use them. The first wave of innovation has been doing things we already do, just better. Want to get a ride from a stranger in a car? It’s an old idea, now much improved.

Forget SoLoMo, just Go
Doing things better was also behind the theme of SoLoMo. Only, up until now, it didn’t really work that well.

And then along came Go, or more specifically Pokémon GO. Running around chasing virtual characters in the real world is not an old pastime. This is totally new (which of course means lots of new problems too).

Pokémon GO has turned your smartphone into a shell. Yes you need the shell, but all of the excitement comes from the ghost in the shell.

Smartphones are shells. And they break easily.

Mobile is the ghost. It lives on.