Are We Already in the “Post Smart Phone Era?”

Have we now entered the “post smart phone” era? So says Shawn DuBravac, chief economist at the Consumer Electronics Association. "I think we are entering a post-smartphone era," he said.

Basically what DuBravac appears to mean is simply that 65 percent of time spent on smartphones now is is "non communication activities." The appellation “post smart phone era” simply reflects the fact that communications functions such as calls and texting are no longer the main focus for smart phones.

“The smartphone has become the viewfinder of your digital life,” said DuBravac. Aside from adding one more catchy phrase, it isn’t so clear that the appellation has too much meaning, though.

To be sure, some have used that phrase to describe the next era of computing form factors. It is rather likely that such use of the term is premature, though.

It’s a bit like people talking about “Web 3.0” even before “Web 2.0,” whatever you think that entails, was firmly established.

CEA seems to base the nomenclature on an overall shift in the technology market’s focus away from hardware and toward apps. That’s reasonable. But no more reasonable or accurate than saying computing architecture is shifting to cloud mechanisms.

Nor can we discern much even by looking at device sales. To be sure, IHS iSuppli predicts global smart phone shipments will rise by 28 percent in 2013 to 836 million units, up from 654 million in 2012, at a time when smart phone penetration in most regions of the globe remains at 20 percent or less.

But an “era” of computing should be generally recognized by most people, not something we debate. Nor do the lead apps used by any class of computing devices over time necessarily define a computing era, though that is a more-logical way of defining a computing era.

By such standards, we cannot tell what the developing era “after the PC” will look like, much less be called. To be sure, the argument that we are entering a post-PC era makes more sense.

It surely is fun, but not actually so helpful, to declare even that the “smart phone era” is ending.