The Last Phone – Ahmed Suliman

The Last Phone

AhmeD sulimAn is working hard to find new things to complain about.

In his 1992 magnum opus The End of History and the Last Man, political scientist Francis Fukuyama famously claimed that, as far as the competition of political systems was concerned, history had largely “ended”. He argued that the fall of the Soviet Union demonstrated that liberal democracy had won the day, and that no significant systemic innovations were forthcoming any time soon to pose a significant challenge to it. The exciting chapters of the history books were all but written.

In the world of 2021 smartphone technology, history again looks like it might be ending.

On face value, this may seem like an absurd claim. New smartphone models are hitting shelves on a weekly basis these days. The glamorous advertisements for the flagship devices from the likes of Apple, Samsung, and Google are emblazoned everywhere, and many people you know (and perhaps you) are upgrading as soon as the telco contract permits.

“WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU NOTICED THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A 60-MEGAPIXEL IMAGE AND A 120-MEGAPIXEL ONE?”

How much is really changing though? Truly new or revolutionary features have become particularly rare in mainstream smartphones. Instead, what has become far more common is cramming more capacity into existing hardware components until they generate a more marketable gigabyte or pixel number. Those upgrades might look snazzy on a promotional brochure or a YouTube ad, but they are rarely all that useful.

When was the last time you noticed the difference between a 60-megapixel image and a 120-megapixel one? The vast majority of users will never fully utilise 8GB of RAM on a phone, let alone 16GB. Luckily, 32GB is just around the corner!

The push to compete on specification statistics rather than innovative features has some detrimental side effects. For one, it has pushed up the cost of components used in smartphone internals, when they would be otherwise expected to be falling in price. Combined with global supply shocks in the semiconductor industry, this in turn results in keeping consumer prices higher than they really need to be. A preoccupation with hardware specifications also shifts the focus away from improving the usability and functionality of software, which has historically been less than optimal, particularly on Android devices. When not focused on padding stats, the marketing for high-end phones tends to promote seemingly ‘new’ and exciting features like in-screen finger print readers or high screen refresh rates. In reality, these are nothing new, and have been around in niche product lines outside the flagships for years. In fact, what little innovation still goes on in the industry is happening within niche smartphones marketed towards tech enthusiasts, while the flagship market is left stagnant.

Things weren’t always this way. Since the iPhone’s release in 2007 disrupted the smartphone world by normalising touch screens and raising the expectations of mobile multimedia, the competition to innovate has been fierce. The following years saw the creation of thriving markets for thirdparty apps, major improvements in battery technology, bigger screens and thinner bezels, and a revolution in mobile photography. These advancements were, in part, backed up and enabled by the emergence of 4G wireless networks, supplanting 3G networks that were optimised for text messages and traditional slow data traffic. The industry was moving at a breakneck pace, and consumers responded to that. In 2013, smartphone sales grew by an astonishing 40% on the year before. That would prove to be a high-water mark, not repeated since.

So, what changed? The story is complex, but certain industry trends have pushed large smartphone manufacturers towards making conservative choices with their new releases. In this they are, in part, victims of their own success. As new smartphones sales soared, they became an increasingly dominant proportion of the revenue bases of retail technology manufacturers. The quarterly and annual sales results of those companies became dependent on the immediate success of each new major model released. This pushed them to become particularly risk-averse when designing their flagships, favouring easy wins and tried-andtested designs over ambitious devices that might flop.

This risk-averseness isn’t entirely misplaced. The tech companies that did attempt to push the envelope in recent times haven’t fared so well. Previously innovative companies like Motorola, LG, and HTC have struggled to gain traction in the market, and have reverted to more traditional form factors and features. Chinese brand OnePlus did well for a while, but couldn’t break out of its niche mould without also adopting some mainstream product development habits.

The future global outlook doesn’t look like particularly positive for many smartphone manufacturers either. The COVID-19 pandemic hit both global supply chains and consumer demand, with sales figures declining sharply across all four quarters of 2020. Worse still, governments – particularly in the western world – are increasingly putting legal pressures on multinationals in regards to their tax and offshore manufacturing practices.

In such an environment, it is unlikely that companies will begin to make radical changes to their best-selling products. I expect the pipeline of innovative features from niche and enthusiast phones to flagships to continue slowing down. It seems like a lose-lose situation for phone manufacturers: innovate and potentially risk a short-term hit in a competitive market, or maintain the current course and risk slow decline as average consumers get bored with new releases and stop upgrading regularly. It seems like the latter sentiment is prevailing, and may continue to for some years to come.

I may be wrong of course, and there could a generational transformation to mainstream smartphones coming around the corner. After all, according to most scholars, in hindsight Fukuyama turned out to be wrong.