The First and Last ‘One-to-One’ Device
Will nothing ever touch the scale of the smartphone?
To me, the most interesting part of Apple’s recent press blitz was how in sync everyone was about one point in particular: that the company is unlikely to find another iPhone. Both Tim Cook and Eddy Cue stated this pretty directly in their respective interviews.
Here was Cue talking to Fast Company:
When everything gets compared to the phone — and it does, and that’s fine — if we do that, we’ll always lose. The phone is a device that everyone on the planet has, and you can’t say that about anything else. So, if we were to go solve the problem of flying a supersonic airplane, that might have significant benefits, but the number of people it impacts is tiny compared to the phone. That comparison is really hard. If I looked at it that way, I’d never do an Apple TV, because there aren’t enough TVs in the world. So, might as well not do that! You can’t look at it that way, and compare everything back to the phone. Then no other product should be created.
And here’s Cook talking to The Washington Post:
Think about this: What other products do you know where the ratio of people to the product, for a consumer electronics product, will be one-to-one over the long haul? I don’t think there is another one.
The global sales of PCs each year are about 275 million right now. That number’s been declining. The global market for smartphones is 1.4 billion. Over time, I’m convinced every person in the world will have a smartphone. That may take a while, and they won’t all have iPhones. But it is the greatest market on earth from a consumer electronics point of view.
Think about it: Families have a TV. Some families are fortunate enough to have multiple TVs. But if you looked at all the TVs in the world, it’s not one-to-one, and it’s not going to be one-to-one.
From a business model perspective, I agree with them. The subsidized iPhone business is yesteryear’s oil business. It’s perhaps the greatest business ever at the scale at which Apple operates. But I’m not sure I agree with the larger point they’re making.
That is, they’re suggesting there will never be another device that reaches the scale that smartphones have reached and are going to reach. As Cook puts it, they are “one-to-one” devices — eventually, everyone on the planet is likely to have one. No other device from cars to televisions to traditional computers have been able to achieve this scale. And no other device will.
That’s certainly possible. Maybe even probable, given the scale — 7 billion or so — we’re talking about. But looking back, I think we would have had the exact same doubts about the cellular phone.
I recall the first time I saw a cell phone. My grandparents got my father one for his birthday at some point in the early 1990s. It was huge. Maybe not Gordon Gekko or Zach Morris huge, but very bulky. And it came with two batteries because each lasted for something like 20 minutes of talk time. There was no “data” on this device beyond simply calling people. I don’t even believe it had SMS.¹
Anyway, thinking back, it was awesome. My dad could call anyone from anywhere! He no longer had to be sitting at his desk or standing in the kitchen with a giant tangled cord draped over him.² But the cost of such convenience was prohibitive for most people — I wouldn’t be shocked if it was the most expensive birthday present my father ever received — and it seemed like very much a nice-to-have, not something everyone in the world would eventually own and have with them at all times.
Of course, times change.
It took some time, but that cellular phone eventually morphed into a smartphone. And those early smartphones set the stage for the iPhone. Thinking about it now, including the “phone” portion of the device in the name seems silly. The amount of phone calls people make on these things versus everything else they do at all times is ridiculously small.
My point is simply that not too long ago, the notion of everyone owning a cell phone was probably far-fetched at best. The notion of everyone owning a device that does everything that our smartphones now do would have been ludicrous; pure science fiction.³ Personal computers at the time were fairly large, expensive devices used mainly for business. Today, we all have supercomputers in our pockets. Supercomputers that are connected to each other and to the collective knowledge of the human race at all times.
We didn’t know everyone would eventually have the descendant of the device my father received for his birthday way back when, because we didn’t know what such a device would be, or that such a device would evolve into what it has become. So I actually think it’s sort of dangerous to talk about never again seeing a device as profound and as far-reaching as the iPhone. It suggests a mentality to only chase the past, rather than come up with something new. Something that could reach such scale.
Of course, Apple has a storied history of taking something that has already existed and taking it to the next level. Like the Mac, the iPod — and yes, even the iPhone, the best example of this. So perhaps they don’t have to necessarily shoot for the hypothetical stars. And maybe it is even a prudent thing to suggest that we shouldn’t expect them to make another device on the scale of the iPhone. Certainly, it’s prudent to suggest that to Wall Street.
But I just refuse to believe that the smartphone will be the be-all, end-all of mass-scale technology. The “what’s next” may not have been invented yet. Or maybe it is out there, just waiting to be chiseled and perfected to take it to such a scale.
¹ Given that the first SMS message was apparently sent in 1992, I highly doubt this phone did have such functionality.
² When we complain about iPhone earbud cords — as I often do — let’s just think back to those curly telephone cords…
³ Actually, better than science fiction.
