The iPhone is dead — long live the iPhone


Many have predicted the death of the iPhone. We’ve been at Peak iPhone a bunch of different times. We’ve seen “stagnant growth,” “looming trouble,” and prognostications that other companies would steal Apple’s market share or that wearables or hearables or AR or VR or XR or SomethingElseR would usurp the smartphone. And yet, the iPhone remains what it has been for a decade and a half: the most successful product in consumer electronics, a $51 billion business in the first three months of this year alone.
A more fair thing to say might be that the iPhone is complete. That’s what we get into in this Status Update. It’s not dead, it’s not dying, but maybe it’s a product on which there is not much more work to do. It’s true of smartphones in general, really; billions of people have slabs of glass in their pocket, and for most people, those slabs are appliances now. Users, by and large, don’t want whiz-bang new features or huge interface overhauls. (We’ll see if folding phones can spark another cycle of new ideas, but I wouldn’t hold your breath.) They just want their device to be a little faster, last a little longer, and maybe cost a little less. They replace theirs when it breaks and not a moment sooner.
But the iPhone’s legacy isn’t over yet. Far from it, in fact. It seems overwhelmingly likely that, next week, at Apple’s WWDC developer conference, we’re going to see the company’s first mixed reality headset. If the rumors and reporting are true, that headset will be shockingly expensive and not all that useful, just like the $700 3G-less first iPhone. But it will show amazing new ways to interact with technology, much like multi-touch did on the iPhone. Apple will bet that developers can make all the new technology more powerful, just like the App Store turned the iPhone into the everything machine.
The real story of the iPhone is not about smartphones. It’s about the way Apple taught the world to touch their screen, to rely on a single device to do everything, to interact with each other and the world through a piece of technology. The iPhone gave Apple an unstoppable marketing machine, an unparalleled supply chain, and a cultural cachet that’s downright bizarre for a gadget company. That’s all going to come in handy for Apple as it navigates whatever is next.
Apple didn’t invent the world we live in, but the iPhone certainly played an outsize role. And if what comes next is AR and VR and glasses on our faces, it’ll only work because the iPhone worked. The future may not be smartphones, but the iPhone’s not going anywhere.
Many have predicted the death of the iPhone. We’ve been at Peak iPhone a bunch of different times. We’ve seen “stagnant growth,” “looming trouble,” and prognostications that other companies would steal Apple’s market share or that wearables or hearables or AR or VR or XR or SomethingElseR would usurp the…
Recent Posts
- GoPro unveils a much cheaper 360-degree camera, but it’s not the all-new Max 2 that we’ve been waiting for
- Among Us 3D will let you deduce from a first-person perspective
- Rumor suggests Nvidia’s had difficulties to iron out with chips for RTX 5070 and 5060 GPUs, seemingly leading to delays and possibly low stock levels
- Apple’s Murderbot series starts streaming in May
- Amazon MGM Studios acquires the license to thrill as its gains full creative control of the entire James Bond franchise in landmark deal
Archives
- February 2025
- January 2025
- December 2024
- November 2024
- October 2024
- September 2024
- August 2024
- July 2024
- June 2024
- May 2024
- April 2024
- March 2024
- February 2024
- January 2024
- December 2023
- November 2023
- October 2023
- September 2023
- August 2023
- July 2023
- June 2023
- May 2023
- April 2023
- March 2023
- February 2023
- January 2023
- December 2022
- November 2022
- October 2022
- September 2022
- August 2022
- July 2022
- June 2022
- May 2022
- April 2022
- March 2022
- February 2022
- January 2022
- December 2021
- November 2021
- October 2021
- September 2021
- August 2021
- July 2021
- June 2021
- May 2021
- April 2021
- March 2021
- February 2021
- January 2021
- December 2020
- November 2020
- October 2020
- September 2020
- August 2020
- July 2020
- June 2020
- May 2020
- April 2020
- March 2020
- February 2020
- January 2020
- December 2019
- November 2019
- September 2018
- October 2017
- December 2011
- August 2010