The smartphone innovation era is over; if not, what’s next?

AI, Web 3.0, IoT, Foldable, Sustainable phones…..

After MWC’23 I heard many of my media friends and analysts talk and report that they find smartphone space getting slightly less exciting. Also, I understand that consumers are holding on to their phones a bit longer and need help finding real reasons to upgrade to the next-generation phone.

So what do I think, having been in this smartphone industry for 10+ years?
I understand all the current sentiments around smartphone innovation; the innovation has kept up. Maybe our industry can’t afford to …..the competition is cut-throat, and everyone is doing fantastic work of tech art. No matter how big of a brand you are, this industry is not forgiving of brands that don’t innovate eg: Sony, LG, HTC, etc
Every other brand of the next-gen phone has a slightly different ID design, higher camera specs, bigger battery compressed in a compact body with a competitive pricing model.
It’s a number or a spec game for most consumers.
But people in my industry strive to make smartphones more innovative, durable, and sustainable, giving the best camera and video experience to capture and treasure beautiful moments of one’s life. It might not be a WOW moment for most tech journalists, but I know the product and r&d team behind every product are thriving for excellence. With their efforts and passion, we have a supercomputer in our hands that makes smartphones an extension of our personalities. Having said all this…. The smartphone innovation era might be a bit slower in the hardware space, but it’s exploding in the software space.

In the coming 5 years, here’s my projection for smartphone innovations:

Sustainable phones: The current macroeconomic situation affects everyone; we cannot complain. Focus on creating value for consumers to encourage them to make purchase decisions. Sustainability is the key. The most important thing for us is to do the right things for the end consumer. Develop products that last long so users can have a longer replacement cycle.

- We should expect brands to give 4 to 5 years for Software updates and security patch support.
- Phones will become energy efficient, and we might have solar phones in the making!
- One power brick or wireless charger to charge all our gadgets in the future.
- Fully recyclable phones
- DIY to fix your broken phones or upgrade without changing the phone
- RAM upgrade as you run out of storage.

Foldable phones: In the past 20 years, the smartphone has always been the integration of existing tech, and through time, the smartphone has gotten more powerful and versatile. Next up are the foldable phones; the future of foldable is the combination of tablets and smartphones. The challenge today is that foldable are bulky and have subpar battery life. I feel foldable phones make this space very intriguing and thrilling. It’s not mainstream, but since I have been using my foldable phone, I need help returning to a stand single-screen phone. Foldable will be mainstream as we offer the following:

- Replace it with working laptops; you don’t have to carry your laptops for meetings anymore because your fold can screen your slides onto the projector, and you can compose emails and do complex edits.
- They become affordable
- They make you more efficient and ditch your laptop/tablet
- Giving a good gaming or video viewing experience
- Offer great camera and video shooting and editing capabilities
- More durable and robust
- Creaseless phone
- Good battery life and is less bulky
Would Apple making a foldable phone make it mainstream? I can’t tell!
But certainly, it’s an area where so much innovation can happen; brands will keep experimenting with form factors and fold techniques. They can come in fold and flip formats and in 2, 3, or 4 folds in the future. As we make our smartphones more super computational, the form factors need to get bigger.

Rolling phones: I don’t see how rolling phones can be mainstream, but certainly, they are very innovative, pushing the hardware innovation to a different level. Motorola’s rollable phone at MWC was impressive, but such phones are not for market share but to show the world that we live in an endless possibility world.

Customized phones: It sounds unrealistic and not perfect for brand profitability, but I feel it will happen. We all have a taste and specific requirements when it comes to smartphones…. Like size, shape, camera and battery need, design, and ID preference. Few brands will get out of their way to open a digital studio where you can drag and drop the phone’s features and design your phone, and you have to pay the price for it. I will be super excited to see that happen; they can go to a level where the Software is optimized based on your taste and match your design language.

AI: Business challenges are exciting; they will lead you to places you never thought of. Many OEMs are considering the potential of AI to enrich the smartphone user experience. Nowadays, smartphone companies are using AI for fast data processing, recognizing various scenes and faces, for night camera shooting, for the security of users, and much more.

- Smartphone <> ChatGPT integration will happen sooner or later
- AI in smartphones is dedicated to security, power efficiency, and photography
- Face ID, voice assistance, AI Apps with an intelligent algorithm
- Live Language Translation
- The next wave of experiences will be apps that support new use cases for smartphone AI, including language processing, human activity prediction, and enhanced data encryption. Natural language translation with on-device AI can improve the speech recognition already present in most smartphones.
- AI processing chips help you set up an alarm when you have forgotten, advise you best places to eat based on your preference, correct your errors, and do auto things on your behalf based on your daily activities.
What we’re witnessing today is the beginning; the best of AI is yet to come in the near future.

Eco System Integration: It’s our privilege to provide people with the tools they need to get closer to the things they love most — now and into the future. Emerging technology is completely changing the world around us. People don’t see the tech industry as they once did. Smartphone players will level up and further integrate more deeply with ecosystem players. Egs: Many IoT brands building smart gadgets, AR, VR, and smart glasses will work with smartphone brands for an immersive experience in real-time.

I also predict that given the china & US political conflict, we might see 5G chip developed in china, an Android alternative OS, and an app store that might bring all the Chinese OEMs to collaborate and work towards a more secure future given all the current US ban possibilities.

Interconnectivity: Connectivity is critical to a smartphone. Users can listen, download music and listen to it via Bluetooth with no performance issues. Smartphones now have antenna technology to ensure a great mobile connection.

Qualcomm Introduces Snapdragon Satellite, The World’s First Satellite-Based Solution Capable of Supporting Two-Way Messaging for Premium Smartphones and Beyond. 6G, the next generation of mobile internet after 5G, will likely launch in 2030.

Web3 goes mobile: Huawei Cloud announced Polygon, Deepbrain Chain, Morpheus Labs, and Blockchain Solutions as its Web3 partners. Since launching its blockchain services in 2018, Huawei Cloud has recently been exploring the potential role of 5G in metaverse developments. It also launched its non-fungible tokens (NFT) collection and trading platform in April 2022.

VERTU, a luxury British phone brand, launched the world’s first Web3 phone, followed by Solanoa Saga web3 mobile phone. METAVERTU was designed explicitly with network security in mind, given the record amounts of hacks the industry witnessed throughout 2022. It offers additional ultra-secure features such as anti-intrusion sensors and a restricted physical security boundary inside the phone. As this is a Web3 mobile device that operates both Android and Web3 systems, the phone features a dApp store platform for decentralized applications, the ability to create, and my non-fungible tokens (NFTs). This premium mobile experience enables you to trade tokens while waiting in line for coffee, mint NFTs on your morning commute, and have instant access to the dApps you love most, anywhere, anytime — all powered by Android. As blockchain-based applications and services increase, companies are expected to jump on the bandwagon and cater to this market or risk losing out.

The smartphone space will keep evolving in many ways and I couldn’t be happier being part of this industry. Emerging technologies such as Blockchain, Web 3.0, Artificial Intelligence, 5G, and cloud computing are significant factors in developing the digital economy andsmartphone can be enablers in helping them reach out to consumers.

Disclaimer: All the above are my opinions on this industry; HONOR has no influence or input.