But the point is that you're going to have a hard time bootstrapping a new phone ecosystem in the current environment. If it's mission critical then they need to be throwing everything at it, not doing it as one option among many.
I agree whole heartedly that it’s going to be really hard to get my iPhone out of my hands, for a host of reasons. That said, would I replace my AirPods with a Bluetooth version that has zero latency 4o, cameras on the stems and Chat over Siri? Um, yes, in a nanosecond. If that AirPod replacement needed a small brick with cellular backhaul that lived in my bag, and could make calls for me, would I use it? Yep, some of the time.
I think there’s a lot of space for device innovation right now. A quick survey of sci-fi ideas yields a lot of possibilities:
Lapel pins that talk to you
Earrings / Earcuffs that talk to you
Directed environmental audio that only you can hear
Drones that attach to you, fly around when you or they want, and then .. talk to you
Projection on arbitrary surfaces
Smart surfaces everywhere that show things
Anyway. We’re not done innovating data and compute connectivity in device form in my opinion. And, I think we would both do well to remember that how hard it is to sell me, or you, on a new phone, is massively different if you’re willing to give away your first 100mm phones.
That said I’m not convinced the next thing they’re putting out is a phone. But it might be a phone killer, or a baby thing that will one day be a phone killer.
Interestingly, isn't that almost exactly what Garmin has done with their wearable ecosystem? A massive data collection people willingly agree to because of the perceived benefits.
Garmin was a long-standing well-respected consumer hardware company that started releasing a miniaturized version of the thing they were famous for: a GPS. They already had brand recognition and all the infrastructure to build quality products that people would trust.
That infrastructure and brand is extremely difficult to bootstrap.
