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The smartphone isn’t dead. But the battle to replace it is already on

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The smartphone isn’t dead. But the battle to replace it is already on

The smartphone changed the world, but listening to some tech bosses lately, you’d be forgiven for thinking AI could threaten its dominance. 

The emerging debate about what comes after the smartphone is about much more than device sales. It’s about who controls the gateway to the customer, and who gets a cut of the money they spend.

And that battle has already begun. Amazon has blocked Meta’s AI assistant, Muse, from shopping on its e-commerce platform. The tech giants are already fighting over who gets between businesses and their customers.

Tellingly, Sam Altman, the OpenAI boss, has questioned the smartphone’s future. He argues that these gadgets are ill-suited to artificial intelligence.

I don’t think the smartphone is about to fall off a cliff. Apple’s iPhone pulled in $54.3 billion in sales in the three months to June 2026, a 22% rise on the year before. Unit shipments also shot up 15%, the tech analysis company IDC estimates. 

If the smartphone loses its dominance at all, it’ll be a slow burn, unlike its rapid rise, having overtaken PC shipments just three and a half years after the iPhone launched in 2007.

However, the smartphone’s stranglehold on how we access the digital world could be challenged by new technologies.

Smart glasses are jostling for pole position. But they come with drawbacks, including added weight and limited battery life. One independent tester burned through half the battery in Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses in just an hour of heavy video use.


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