The Smartphone Decade Is Over. What Comes Next?

The smartphone transformed the world more completely than any technology since the internet itself — which it eventually subsumed. For fifteen years, selling more smartphones, better smartphones, and more services to smartphone users drove the growth of the largest companies in history.

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That era is over.

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The Saturation Problem

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In developed markets, essentially everyone who wants a smartphone has one. Replacement cycles have lengthened as hardware improvements have become incremental rather than transformative. The upgrade from a two-year-old phone to a new model no longer compels users in the way that moving from a brick phone to a touchscreen once did.

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The Candidates to Replace It

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The tech industry is investing enormous resources in identifying the next platform. The leading candidates are spatial computing — the broad category that includes augmented reality glasses and mixed reality headsets — and AI interfaces that may not require a screen at all.

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Apple's Vision Pro represents the most polished current version of spatial computing. Its first-generation limitations are significant: weight, battery life, and price. But the trajectory of improvement is clear.

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The British Opportunity

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Britain's strengths in AI research and its relatively strong startup culture give it a credible stake in the next computing platform. The companies that define the user interfaces of spatial computing and AI interaction are not yet built. Some of them will be.

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