When the first Apple iPhone hit the market in 2007, not everyone was
convinced it would supplant the flip-phone.
When Google's Android software system arrived a year later, the Blackberry
still seemed to have a bright future.
But with the iPhone 4 in 2010, featuring a high-resolution display, sleek
design and front-facing camera, our collective fate was sealed. Here are 10
ways the smartphone has made its mark over the decade.
Access everywhere?
Today some 5 billion smartphones are in use around the world, according to
Canalys Research.
The total number of internet subscriptions has soared to 7.2 billion
globally from 1.3 billion in 2010, the vast majority of them mobile
subscriptions, International Telecommunications Union data shows.
The explosion in connectivity has been especially dramatic in the developing
world, where there are now more mobile connections than people.
Tech uber alles?
Apple, once a niche computer company, is now one of the world's most
valuable companies thanks to the iPhone.
The five largest Fortune 500 technology companies - Apple, Amazon, Google,
Microsoft and Facebook - currently boast a market cap of $4.7 trillion,
compared with about $800 billion for the top five in 2010.
Not all of that is due to the smartphone, of course, but the mobile-related
technologies and services accounted for nearly $4 trillion in economic
activity in 2018, according to trade group GSMA.
There's an app for that?
Whether we're hailing a taxi, ordering food, playing a game, finding a date,
listening to music or shopping for just about anything, there's a good
chance we'll be doing it with a smartphone app that didn't exist in 2010.
Many of the most popular apps are free, but consumers are still expected to
spend more than $120 billion in app stores during 2019, according to App
Annie, a mobile apps analytics firm.
Feed me?
The endless scroll on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social media
apps now consumes 34 minutes of every US adult's day, according to Nielsen.
Fewer people are sitting on the sofa to watch live TV at set times, and
advertisers are following. Mobile ad spending surpassed TV for the first
time in 2018 in terms of percentage share of the US market, according to
research firm eMarketer.
We can also thank the smartphone for Instagram influencers, "sextortion,"
and fake news.
Smile for the (smartphone) camera?
Global shipments of digital cameras dropped from their 2010 peak of 121
million to just 19 million units in 2018, according to the Camera & Imaging
Products Association (CIPA).
Meantime the latest phones pack as many four camera lenses and cutting edge
software that makes it easier than ever to get that perfect shot.
The front-facing camera might be the busiest: Google reports that its
Android devices take 93 million selfies every day.
Where am I?
The satellite tracking technology known as GPS, combined with information
from mobile phone towers and Wi-Fi networks, has made the smartphones
incredibly powerful tracking devices.
Google maps and its poorer cousins enable even the most directionally
impaired find their way around unfamiliar locales with ease. For the
privacy-minded, though, it's a disaster: Phone companies and app makers
routinely record the movements of subscribers and sell that data to
advertisers, a $20 billion-a-year business.
The data is "anonymised," but as numerous studies and a recent New York
Times investigation have revealed it is often a simple matter to identify
who is behind the dot on the map.
Nearly 50% of companies surveyed by Verizon this year used or planned to
soon use smartphone management tools to track their employees.
You can look it up?
The 2010 edition of the venerable Encyclopedia Britannica, all 32 volumes
and 129 pounds of it, turned out to be the last. But untold barroom
arguments or dining room debates can now be settled on the spot: Wikipedia
is consulted more than 240 million times daily.
Distracting ourselves to death?
In 2018 alone in the US, 2,628 fatal crashes involved a distracted driver,
and of those deadly crashes, about 13% involved mobile phone use, according
to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
Forget your wallet?
Apple Pay and Google Pay are still afterthoughts for most US consumers, but
China may be a harbinger. Alipay and WeChat pay, China's two big smartphone
payment services, have reached a combined adoption rate of over 80% since
they were launched around the beginning of the decade, according to a study
by Bain.
The QR code now peppers storefront windows. Even streetside beggars have
adapted, sometimes rejecting cash and asking that payments be made via
WeChat Pay or Alipay.
Say what?
Among the major casualties of the smartphone era is the conventional phone
call itself: ubiquitous messaging apps have helped make video calls, GIFs,
emojis and audio messaging preferred modes of communication. In the UK, for
example, the total number of minutes spent on voice calls fell from 254
billion in 2013 to 206 billion in 2018, and the number of text messages
dropped from 129 billion to 74 billion over the same period, according to
Ofcom. Mobile data usage, meanwhile, jumped almost nine-fold between 2013
and 2018. The number of available emojis has nearly tripled to almost 3,000
since 2010.
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