This Will Be the Next Big Thing After Smartphones

Rafe Brena, Ph.D.

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Published in

Predict

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19 min read

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Feb 28, 2025

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We didn’t see it coming

+Photo by Alvaro Reyes on Unsplash

Have you followed the recent launch of the iPhone 16E, full of excitement and anticipation?

Of course not. You barely noticed it amid a flurry of news.

What a contrast to the time when an iPhone launch was such a big event that people camped outside the Apple stores to be among the first ones to grab a shiny new one as people around clapped…

What’s happened to the iPhone? Has Apple lost its mojo and its innovative capabilities? Or is it more general? Is it all about the smartphone industry?

Foldable phones, OLED screens, new materials, and finishes–nothing seems to be enough to get the luster back to smartphones.

And perhaps it’s not about excitement. In my personal case, I prefer reliable devices that, as Steve Jobs put it, “just work.”

Boring is good.

For sure, smartphones have reached a remarkable maturity and have reached a state of full development of their potential. It’s not only the device but also the ecosystems around it: for instance, the smartphone has inside a GPS, which is, no doubt, a marvel of engineering, but what makes it so valuable is the availability of services like Uber, which combine GPS with a digital marketplace of drivers and…