The Death of the Smartphone

By _EETimes Blog

April 24, 2014

The biggest trend that was not reported at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona at the end of February was that, instead of lugging around four devices, we seem to be headed toward fewer devices.

It's a good thing that Samsung and others didn't get the bulletin, because the handset companies (other than Apple) paid for most of the extravaganzas.

OK, so I may have exaggerated a bit to get your click, but there is something fundamental going on here that will affect handset manufacturers and carriers and in turn will alter the semiconductor R&D agenda that's been set since the 1990s.

I will be somewhat obsessive-compulsive about it. I will roughly divide the smartphone market into three segments: the greenfield new buyers, the value seekers, and the power users.

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