Have we already reached ‘peak smartphone’? | TECH(talk)

In January, Apple surprised the tech world when it acknowledged that soft iPhone sales would cause a rare earnings miss. 

Then other smartphone makers said they were seeing the same kind of sales slowdown.

Analysts offered up a variety of reasons: prices are getting too high, people hang onto hardware longer, the global economy is slowing. You get the idea.

But what if it’s all of those things and one more: a slowdown in actual innovation – the kinds of advances that make a new phone not just a want-to-get, but a must-have device? Maybe that means foldable phones. Or maybe we have to wait for real 5G networks (not the pretend 5G”E” network AT&T is now touting.)

That’s the topic of this episode’s discussion between Macworld‘s Michael Simon and Computerworld Executive Editor Ken Mingis as they try to figure out where the smartphone market is going and what’s needed to goose sales.

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