Happy 10th birthday, iPhone — but will you make it to 20?
The iPhone turns 10 on Thursday. Happy birthday! And with that out of the way, on to the future. How many more years do you think we’ll be serenading the world’s favorite digital device?
Sure, Apple is poised to sell more than 200 million iPhones this year. But technology is fickle. Things change really fast.
So is it a stretch to consider that 10 years from now, we’ll have ditched the iPhone or Android phone for some other device?
“You and I may still be using our iPhones, but my kids might be phone-nevers,” says Alex Kruglov, CEO of the video chat site SmileTime. “They’ll have some other device that is more utilitarian and a part of their body.”
He sees this imaginary wearable product doing all the things the iPhone does: communicating, surfing the Web, snapping and managing photos.
But “the first wearables have been horrible,” says Gene Munster, who runs the Loup Ventures fund in Minneapolis. “It’s hard to imag- ine what it will be. ... But there will be some device you seamlessly interact with, and you’ll either wear it as glasses or contacts.”
Ten years ago at #TalkingTech, we made calls on a Sprint-branded flip phone, so we’ve really moved on. But the phone we’re addicted to now, the one that provides 70% of Apple’s revenue, disappearing like the original iPod? Count us as non-believers.
We asked folks at the VidCon convention here whether they truly believed in a world of tomorrow without an iPhone.
Haleigh Singelton, 15, says she wouldn’t mind a new, mythical wearable device directing her to navigate through gestures and head movements: “If that’s where we’re headed, it makes sense.”
Mom Lisa says that whatever the device is, “it would just be something else for us to lose.”
Molly Fershin, 14, says she wouldn’t mind using a new device if it’s better than the iPhone. But, she says, “I’d miss holding it.”
Added sister Reilly, 18, “I’d feel naked not having it on me.”
So remember, we’re on record — the iPhone will still be going strong in 2027.