Smartphones to Disappear in 5 Years, Says Study

Absurdly Driven looks at the world of business with a skeptical eye and a firmly rooted tongue in cheek.

Show your iPhone 6 some extra love tonight.

Stroke your Samsung Galaxy and tell it just how much it's done for you over the years. Well, over the months, perhaps.

Whisper to your Motorola that it's never over till it's over, but you always have to prepare for the bitter end.

Why am I asking you to do this? Because it could be that in five years' time your smartphone will be no more. I don't just mean your smartphone. I mean everybody's smartphone.

This is the startling suggestion emerging from the "10 Hot Consumer Trends" study conducted by Ericsson.

Its ConsumerLab delved deep into future trends and identified some quite predictable results.

The Lifestyle Network Effect, for example. This is a fancy phrase encompassing the thought that the more people use online services, the more people use online services.

It's the thing sometimes referred to as the sharing economy--the one that might be better known as the Someone Will Give It to Me This Instant and Cheaper Economy.

The near future will apparently see the rise of electronic things being inserted into our bodies, so that we can know everything our bodies are doing and feeling and thereby improve our bodily functions.

And, as if this hasn't happened already, another hot trend is that we'll want to stream everything and be commanded by nothing.

But it's the smartphone prediction that's truly moving.

The idea is that very soon artificial intelligence will be so advanced that we'll interact with things that we wear--and, who knows, with doors, ceilings, and Britain's Houses of Parliament.

Smartphones have awful battery life. They're clingy, too. They're in constant need of being held.

It just isn't the basis for a long-term relationship.

AI will just allow us to talk into thin air and be heard and even understood.

But wait.

Was this study done by asking experts, or even people who claim to be experts? Actually no (and yes).

Ericsson asked real human beings--100,000 of them, in 39 countries.

This ought to cheer smartphones up a little.

Steve Jobs was always fond of reminding everyone that real people don't know what they want. So can they really be sure of what their desires will be in the future, at least in terms of gadgets? (Actually, in terms of anything.)

Can they be sure that the exciting prospect of the Internet of Things, which suggests every single household item will be controlled from your phone, will suddenly divorce the phone without a second thought?

Sometimes in surveys people give answers that make them look wise. Could it be that these respondents pander better than they prognosticate?

Or perhaps these 100,000 have been watching more sci-fi movies than the average and have good reason to wish their smartphones away.

But how will Apple make money then?

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