After the smartphone

智能手机之后

Fifteen years ago Steve Jobs announced three new products: a music player, a mobile phone and an internet communicator. As Apple's then-boss gave his presentation, his audience slowly realised that the three products were in fact a single gadget: the iPhone. Cue applause, cue Apple's renaissance, and cue a new era in technology as the smartphone overtook the desktop PC as the centre of personal computing.

十五年前，史蒂夫·乔布斯（Steve Jobs）发布了三款新产品：音乐播放器、手机和互联网通讯设备。当乔布斯（当时苹果公司的老板）开始介绍产品时，观众才慢慢反应过来，这三款产品实际上是一个小物件：苹果手机。台下掌声雷动，苹果的复兴时代已然来临，苹果手机开启了科技领域的新时代——智能手机取代了台式电脑，取得了个人计算领域的核心地位。

Today even Mr Jobs might be surprised by how many uses have been found for his versatile device. The small screen has come to handle banking, networking, map-reading, gaming and much more. Apple and other phonemakers have been enriched not only by hardware sales (worth $530bn last year) but by controlling what happens on the platform, from app stores (which raked in $135bn) to mobile ads (worth nearly $300bn).

如今，甚至连乔布斯可能都难以相信，他这款“多才多艺”的设备到底有多少用处。机缘巧合之下，这张小巧的屏幕开始供人们进行银行业务、上网、看地图、打游戏等等。苹果公司和其他手机制造商不仅在硬件上大赚了一笔（盈利5200亿美元），还通过控制苹果商店（轻松进账1350亿美元）、手机广告（盈利将近3000亿美元）等平台，赚得盆满钵满。

Yet there is mounting evidence that the smartphone era is fading. Phone sales have been in gentle decline since 2016, as slower technological improvement has led to people upgrading less often. In rich countries, already saturated, the decline is especially marked. So tech innovators and investors are on the hunt for the next big thing, in hopes of winning not just a juicy hardware market but the potential to control the platform on which everything takes place.

然而，越来越多的迹象表明，智能手机的时代正在消亡。手机销量自2016年开始缓慢下降，同时技术发展更加迟缓，人们更新迭代的频率也随之下降。在发达国家中，智能手机已经达到饱和状态，销量下降趋势尤为明显。因此，技术开发者和投资者便开始寻觅下一个“大家伙”，他们不仅希望开拓一个有利可图的硬件市场，还希望控制这个包罗万象的平台。

The current big idea is virtual-reality (VR) headsets, spurred on in part by pandemic lockdowns. More promising, but further off, are glasses for experiencing augmented reality (AR), in which computer graphics are overlaid on the real world. Most of America's big tech firms—among them Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft—as well as Asian giants like ByteDance (TikTok's Chinese owner) and Sony, are developing or already selling VR or AR headsets. What has so far been a niche market is about to become very crowded.

目前的主流想法是虚拟现实（VR）头盔，在某种程度上，是疫情封锁措施推动了该设想。更有前景，同时也更遥远的，是增强现实（AR）体验眼镜，它可以用计算机图形覆盖现实场景。多数美国大型科技公司——苹果、谷歌、Meta和微软，以及亚洲巨头——字节跳动（Tiktok的中国母公司）和索尼，正在研发VR和AR头盔，有的公司已经开始出售了。该领域一直以来都是小众市场，现在却变得拥挤起来了。

【背景知识】

VR（虚拟现实） vs AR（增强现实）

这是两种不同的虚拟技术，AR（Augmented Reality）是增强现实技术，是虚拟数字画面和裸眼现实画面的结合，VR（Virtual Reality）是虚拟现实技术，由纯虚拟数字画面构成。说白了，VR全是假的，AR真假各半。比如，Ikea（宜家）就曾利用AR技术进行市场营销，他们开发了一个叫Place的软件，消费者可以在线“试”家具。

而VR使用者看到则完全是虚拟数字画面

Any claim to have discovered the next big platform deserves caution. There have been plenty of false starts. Tablets were proclaimed as a rival to the smartphone, yet Apple still makes six times as much money selling iPhones as it does from iPads. Smart homes were seen as another possible mega-platform, but so far Alexa and her like serve mostly as jukeboxes and egg-timers. In-car tech is another platform that has proved useful and valuable, but hardly threatens to become the centre of anyone's digital life. It is easy to imagine headsets, which are now used mostly for gaming, getting stuck in a similar niche.

一切宣称发现了新平台的消息都需谨慎对待。失败的开端随处可见。以前，平板被视为智能手机的对手，然而，目前在苹果公司，手机利润仍是平板的六倍之多。曾几何时，智能家居也被视为另一个潜在的巨型平台，但目前为止，Alexa之类的家具大多都被用作点唱机和煮蛋计时器。车载技术也是一个有潜力的平台，但是很难成为人们数字生活的中心。而如今，人们打游戏时经常会使用头戴式耳机，不难想到它会形成一个类似的小众市场。

What does seem to be under way, however, is a gradual movement by consumers towards a constellation of new wearable devices. These include voice-activated smart headphones, which can make calls, read messages and more, and smart watches, which handle scheduling, navigation and fitness. A growing array of health-tech gadgets measure everything from blood sugar to sleep patterns. In America unit sales of these “wearables” are already close to sales of smartphones.

然而，如今的趋势似乎是，消费者逐渐倾向于各种穿戴式设备。其中，声控智能耳机可以用来打电话、读短信等等，智能手表可以用来设置日程、导航和健身。针对健康的技术设备层出不穷，可以用来监测各种数据，包括血糖和睡眠情况。在美国，就单位产品销售量而言，这些穿戴式设备差不多已经能与智能手机分庭抗礼了。

These gadgets are more like accessories for the phone than replacements. But as computing shifts away from the pocket and towards wrists and ears, a growing share of consumers' attention and spending is seeping away from the phone, too. As VR and AR glasses become lighter and cheaper, they could form the most powerful part of the wearable cluster.

与其说取代手机，这些产品更像是手机的配饰。但是，科技发展逐渐“放过了”人们的口袋，而转向手腕和耳朵，顾客的注意力和消费力也随之远离了手机。随着VR和AR眼镜的质量越来越轻，价格也越来越便宜，它们成为了穿戴式设备中举足轻重的一部分。

People are not about to ditch their phones, any more than they threw out their laptops a decade ago. But as they interact more often with earphones or, soon, glasses, more of them will come to use their phone as a kind of back office, primarily there to provide processing muscle for other gadgets. As chips get even smaller, phones may not be needed even for that.

十年，人们淘汰了手提电脑，但这并不意味着他们如今会放弃手机。但是，随着他们与耳机的交流逐渐增多，或未来与眼镜的互动逐渐频繁，手机将被视为“后勤部门”，主要用来帮助其他设备处理任务。随着芯片的体积越来越小，手机可能连“后勤部门”都做不了了。

Don't expect any of this to happen right away. Internet-enabled phones were launched in the late 1990s and failed to catch on outside offices. AR headsets—bulky, pricey and so far used only in industry—are at a similar stage. Yet when technological tipping-points are crossed, things can change fast. Four years after Mr Jobs introduced his iPhone, smartphones outsold all laptop and desktop computers worldwide. Silicon Valley's latest great hope is still a work in progress. But if and when the right product appears, the future may arrive very quickly.

但是，别期待这一切能迅速实现。联网手机在20世纪90年代末就已经问世了，但却未能在市场中流行开来。而AR头戴式显示器如今也面临相同境遇：AR显示器体型臃肿、价格不菲，目前仅被用于工业企业。然而，当跨越某些科技临界点之后，事情便会迅速出现转机。距乔布斯发布苹果手机四年之后，智能手机的全球销量便超过了手提电脑和台式电脑。目前，硅谷最重要的新产品仍在研发阶段。但如果真的出现了一款理想产品，那么人类的未来画卷将飞速展开。