Dubai: The next real phase of development in smartphones will be enhanced technologies, which includes a heavy focus on innovative user interfaces, which the industry is hoping will breathe new life into the market, an industry expert said.
“We expect more immersive touchless experiences, with many new interfaces developing such as voice, artificial intelligence, mixed reality, augmented reality and gesture experiences, thereby providing new ecosystems and experiences beyond what we know in today’s smartphone market,” David McQueen, Research Director at ABI Research, told Gulf News.
The research firm said in a report that Google and Amazon will emerge as leaders and drive innovation over the next five years, while Apple, Samsung, Huawei and Microsoft will follow as they are not currently set up to drive future innovation in the market.
Such devices as the Mate 10 Pro, which Huawei already claims is an “intelligent device” with its on-board artificial intelligence chip, needs to have a 5G connection to really have real intelligence, he added.
He said Apple, which just launched the iPhone X in November, will lag behind the market due to innovation complacency.
“Apple just stands out as it’s viewed as a smartphone market leader in many ways. We have viewed these players as being burdened with legacy establishments in the smartphone business, which provide them with little flexibility to innovate outside the box.
“They often follow an evolutionary approach to innovation, partly to protect their existing investment, as they fear disrupting their current market leadership, and partly because they face cultural challenges as their R&D operations are ageing and they find it hard to embrace new and more disruptive approaches to technology,” McQueen said.
“I suspect it will come from Samsung, with Apple and Huawei close behind, but that is just the smartphone hardware piece that is an enabler for just part of the wider ecosystem of immersive experiences that we have discussed,” he said.
However, he said that falling behind now should not be dismissed so easily from leadership contention in the future, as these companies currently have a major influence on the market, mainly through brand strength and market share.
“I do expect most, if not all, of these interfaces to begin appearing in a single device, but timing will be tied to the launch of 5G as a key enabler, notably VR, to limit latency. With this in mind, we don’t expect 5G devices in volume to really start kicking in until 2020, so expect many of these services to be fully integrated by 2022 at the earliest,” he said.
