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Hello my dears,
What do you think about this? Could the smartphone really be a discontinued model in the not too distant future? And could you imagine carrying one of the other products around with you? Feel free to write your opinions and thoughts in the comments!
For Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, the days of cell phones will soon be over. They are speculating on other technology that will shape our lives in the future.
Cell phones are yesterday's technology - or at least a discontinued model. Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are in relative agreement on this.
Tim Cook, on the other hand, still sees a lot of future potential in smartphones.
But regardless of whether tech billionaires say one way or the other, in the end it's always mainly about the money.
Mark Zuckerberg: Augmented reality glasses as the next big computer platform
Mark Zuckerberg is suddenly wearing glasses - at least in the fall of 2024, when he took to the stage at Meta's Connect in-house conference wearing chunky nerd glasses.
The glasses model was the Orion prototype.
In his opinion, the augmented reality glasses are an important step towards a hands-free smartphone alternative. It is therefore a completely different concept to the Asus AirVision M1, for example, which is intended more as a monitor replacement:
According to Meta and a report by WDR, users should be able to do the following things with Orion in the future, for example:
see holographic 3D images in the field of vision
be able to operate apps like on a smartphone
Make phone and video calls
Receive recipe suggestions by looking in the fridge
Receive navigation and directions
Orion can be operated with voice commands, eye movements and taps on the handlebar. With an additional EMG wristband, you can also swipe, click and scroll using gestures in the air.
The glasses are due to be launched on the market in 2027.
In his 2020 New Year's post on Facebook, Zuckerberg was already very confident about the potential of AR glasses:
"While I expect smartphones to remain our primary devices for much of this decade, sometime in the 2020s we'll see a breakthrough with augmented reality glasses that will redefine our relationship with technology."
The future Zuckerberg describes here, however, is above all one according to his own ideas: Meta has invested over 80 billion US dollars in the development of AR and VR technology since 2014, according to the Financial Times.
Elon Musk: Neuralinks instead of smartphones
For Elon Musk, cell phones and smartwatches have also been a technology of the past since 2020:
For the billionaire, the technology of the future is neuralinks. Neuralink is a company that Musk founded in 2016.
The company develops an interface between the brain and computer. It achieved its first success in early 2024: A 29-year-old paraplegic had a Neuralink implant successfully implanted in his brain.
But Neuralink is not just for sick people: This year, according to Wired, the company has filed trademark applications for several terms, including Telepathy. Telepathy is initially intended to enable people with paralysis to control computers and smartphones with their thoughts.
The next conceivable step is communication between people using telepathy, which would then be possible without a smartphone. Similar to Zuckerberg, Musk is also pursuing his own interests by announcing the end of the smartphone.
Tim Cook still sees a lot of innovation potential in the smartphone
Apple CEO Tim Cook remains unsurprisingly optimistic about the future of the iPhone.
According to MacRumors, in a conference call on the first quarter of 2025, he still sees many opportunities in the further development of smartphones:
"I think there's a lot of innovation left in the smartphone".
At the same time, Cook was quick to emphasize the great importance of artificial intelligence for the future. Unlike Mark Zuckerberg, for example, this does not make the smartphone unnecessary for him, but a key technology.
At least that's how he put it in a long interview with the Washington Post in 2016:
"Look at the core technologies that make up a smartphone today and those that will dominate in the smartphones of the future - like AI. AI will make this product even more indispensable to you. It will become an even better assistant than it is today."
Even if Cook's statements feel much more realistic in our everyday lives than those of Zuckerberg and Musk, there is a similar interest behind them to that of his tech billionaire colleagues: He, too, wants to still be selling his products to millions of people in 2030.
https://www.gamestar.de/artikel/musk-zuckerberg-cook-smartphone-zukunft,3429964.html
