Why smartphones aren't cool anymore

Smartphones are no longer cool. Although people are still scrambling to buy the new generation of iPhones, and Xiaomi, Meizu, Hammer and China Cool Alliance are still hot sellers in the war of words, it cannot cover up a phenomenon - today's smartphones have not changed fundamentally from a few years ago, and people's enthusiasm is fading.

This is attributed to two reasons: first, in any field, only a few players are truly "enthusiastic", and mass consumer products do not have the fever gene; second, the rise and fall of crazes are always accompanied by "time reallocation", and the time occupied by mobile phones has no room for growth.

Mass consumer products do not have fever genes

As a mass consumer product, smartphones are not more special than cars, digital cameras, and audio equipment. We have not seen the whole nation become obsessed with a certain common car model or a certain digital camera that can be found everywhere. Why did smartphones become a product that everyone is passionate about in the past few years?

The launch of the first generation of iPhone was a truly epoch-making product, which was popular among the public at that time. Android , following iOS and adopting an open source strategy, also accelerated the process of smartphones from being amazing to becoming popular. But today, many years later, smartphones are just that, and have become ordinary devices.

One fact that is easily overlooked is that smartphones have the property of "offsetting the gap between the rich and the poor" to some extent. An ordinary worker or student can hold a smartphone that is no different from that of the world's richest man.

The top-of-the-line or most unique equipment is usually the "cool" product with feverish characteristics, which will be obsessed with by enthusiasts for a long time - such as supercars or retro cameras. They are also usually very expensive or very rare.

This is what makes smartphones unique: they offer top-level comfort at an ordinary price. Everyone will flock to them in a short period of time, enjoy the beauty brought by technology, and invest a lot of time in them.

People's joy in owning top-notch devices has led to a short-lived boom in smartphones, followed by the rapid popularization of mobile Internet. Now mobile phones seem to be able to do everything, and everyone is pursuing newer models of mobile phones with larger screens, higher configurations and more functions. We read, surf the Internet, socialize and play games on smartphones.

But to be honest, these "capabilities" of smartphones can also be achieved by PSP handhelds if manufacturers are willing. Smartphones become the protagonist and the carrier of everything simply because they are the most suitable for carrying, nothing more.

This is a bit like earlier computers, when people were excited about 1.44M floppy disks and 256M memory. But when computers became popular and became a daily necessity, this kind of excitement was rare. For ordinary users, the difference between 4G memory and 8G memory became irrelevant.

Time reallocation

In addition to the factors of the device itself, the reason why smartphones are so popular is that people spend too much time on them. Smartphones no longer just occupy fragmented time, but have become a device that many people play with anytime and anywhere.

The problem is that there is no room for this time to increase, and what follows is time redistribution. When the smartphone gradually becomes a connection, it will also quickly become a tool like a laptop.

This is similar to the situation of some Internet products. Forums, QQ , portals, blogs, Renren, Weibo, and WeChat have all experienced the stage of "swallowing" users' time. We think that WeChat is the superstar of the entire mobile Internet, and we also think that Sina Weibo dominates the market, the four major portals dominate everything, and they simply cannot survive without QQ.

But "the wheel of history rolls forward", and our time is always accompanied by a process of aggregation and redistribution. As the time occupied by smartphones gradually passes, its popularity will also fade and become uncool - unless you think Weibo is still cool now.

Smartphones that can do anything are very similar to Sina and Sohu, which can read any news, but they cannot stop new websites that have achieved perfection in a single field. The smart devices that are about to take off may be a way to redistribute time, and soon, most products in life will be intelligent. People used to use smartphones to do "everything" instead, such as reading, playing games, and paying. When their original forms evolve, everything will return to its original position.

At that time, the mobile phones that were truly worthy of being pursued by enthusiasts might be cutting-edge products that were far ahead in the field of technology. The various large manufacturers that seemed to have many fans were nothing more than manufacturing consumer products that everyone needed.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.