Smartphones to die out within five years, replaced by artificial intelligence – survey

“Many consumers believe smartphones will cease to exist within five years, according to new research carried out by researchers on behalf of Ericsson,” Adam Boult reports for The Telegraph. “The company’s ConsumerLab questioned more than 100,000 customers in its native Sweden and 39 other countries, seeking their views on their technological desires for the future.”

“Half of the respondents said they thought mobile technology would be a thing of the past by 2021, with increasingly prevalent artificial intelligence superseding many of its functions,” Boult reports. “Rebecka Cedering Ångström of Ericsson ConsumerLab said: ‘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.'”

Boult reports, “Ericsson ConsumerLab’s new report, 10 Hot Consumer Trends for 2016, claims to represent the views of 1.1 billion people across 24 countries.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: A 2012 survey of consumers found that one in two believed stormy weather could interfere with cloud computing.

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31 Comments

  1. First, shall come Apple’s super – simple smart ear bud phone. Once perfected and hits version 7 – Apple then will make transplants to the brain, just under the skin, behind your left ear. 🙂

    No display, No buttons, the entire phone in an ear bud.

    Ask Siri to do everything, add a contact, call a contact, read your texts/emails, write your text/emails, check the weather, check your calendar, schedule your calendar, play a song, make a calculation, provide directions… and whatever else. An additional pocket display of your desired size will be available as an accessory to the ear bud – for those who need to see confirmations of Siri’s help.

    1. That won’t be at all confusing when I’m speaking to somebody and need to input and receive information at the same time. We have eyes and fingers because they’re a good way of interacting with the world.

  2. Who the hell were they asking. I doubt if I asked 50 people on spec that even one would say that he/she thought that the smartphone would be dead in 5 years to be replaced by some form of artificial intelligence (which by definition would not be part of your smartphone). Most would not even be tech savvy enough to have an opinion at all I suspect. Which means that they have either focused on fantasist geeks (likely from Google Labs) or loaded the question completely to get this response, or both. There may well be some long term merit in such imaginings but no way within 5 years especially as this artificial intelligence replacement hasn’t in any way been defined as yet. Simply weird.

  3. Sorry, but not all information can be conveyed audibly, and even if it can it’s definitely not quicker. Hence why we still read books and don’t just release everything as an audio book. Also artificial intelligence is not a replacement for screens, it’s a replacement for looking up and doing things yourselves, you still need audio and visual ways of relating the information.

  4. Ericsson use focus groups, Apple don’t use focus groups. I think that this research suggests that Apple has the better approach.

    Come to think of it, didn’t Ericsson used to make mobile phones back in the day? We don’t hear much of them these days.

  5. This reinforces what I always thought. At least 50 percent of the general population are retards. Retards have opinions but they really are not worth anything. Unfortunately, they are breeding faster. Republ……

  6. Back in the 1950s if you surveyed most people, you would have known that by 1990, everyone would by driving flying cars and back in the 1930s people thought that we would have two way video phones in our watches by 1950. Back in the 1960s, people thought that we would have moon colonies by now too.

  7. The people who actually believe this should conduct the following experiment: sit at a reasonably filled bar (one with at least 20 seats) and scan both ways. On a average day, about 80% of the people will either have their phones sitting on the bar or actually be holding them in their hands and using them in some way. The smartphone (post iPhone, that is) is the stickiest device in the history of consumer electronics. It subsumes an additional standalone device about once every 1-2 years, and will be more widely used, not less, in 5 years time.

  8. OMG what a mess.

    1) There is no “increasingly prevalent artificial intelligence.” There are only increasingly prevalent expert systems with voice technology tacked on. That’s not ‘artificial intelligence’. It’s a technology that’s been around since the 1970s and has reached a level of maturity that makes it mostly work for casual users.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_system

    2) This is clearly coerced/manipulated data. How else could they come up with a bizarro defined date for their poll results. Seriously:

    Half of the respondents said they thought mobile technology would be a thing of the past by 2021

    Right. I bet a good luck at the actual questions the responders were asked will prove my point.

    Useful points: Getting away from handheld computers has already started within situations where they are inconvenient, at least here in the FIRST WORLD. Cars are a great example. But will handheld devices disappear from one’s pockets or bag while walking about the world? Not unless you want to become a GlassHole or some such cyborg.

  9. Within five years I want to see live holograms of a football games within a football stadiums beamed to my coffee table. During the commercial breaks there should be an option to see a hologram of a fat guy with a beer hat doing the nae nae dance with a scantily-clad cheerleader. At halftime The New Duncan Imperials will sing I’m Schizophrenic (No I’m Not), while throwing-out pieces of carved Thanksgiving turkey to the crowd.

    I will not a wear a giant VR helmet to see this. There is a reason why VR never took off as a product and it’s not because of lag. It is because the goggles or giant visor helmets are impractical to wear the entire day. Beamed holograms and/or stylish AR glasses would to the trick.

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