Apple Says You May Not Need an iPhone a Decade From Now

Trials may be stressful for the mega-corporations on the stand, but they’re great for scooping up future-product gossip and executives’ strange visions of the future. The latest tidbit, courtesy of Google’s ongoing antitrust trial, came from Apple’s senior vice president of services, Eddy Cue, on May 7 when he said, “…you may not need an iPhone 10 years from now.”

So let’s dig into what Cue could’ve possibly meant by that.

what could possibly kill off the iphone?

“Incumbents have a hard time… we’re not an oil company, we’re not toothpaste—these are things that are going to last forever… you may not need an iPhone 10 years from now,” said Cue, as reported by PhoneArena.

Never mind the depressing assertion that our thirst for oil will last forever, but Cue doesn’t exactly say what could drive the iPhone beyond the Pearly Gates to take up residence next to the Walkman and Betamax.

“Cue sees a possibility that the iPhone will be killed off in 10 years because of AI,” PhoneArena’s Alan Friedman opines. “Cue says that the rise of AI is creating a huge technological shift that can force changes on tech companies that felt invincible.

“Cue had some examples already cued up and ready to use. He mentioned once powerful Silicon Valley tech stalwarts like HP, Intel, and Sun Microsystems that ‘either don’t exist today or are significantly smaller and much less impactful.’ It would be foolish to think that just because a company is (the) Apple of iPhone fame, the same thing can’t happen to it.”

Harkening back to two other Apple products whose roles in the then-future, now-present were massively misrepresented.

When the first iPads went on sale in 2010, the Mac’s imminent obsolesce and impending demise were widely reported everywhere from pundits’ columns to internet comment sections.

Laptops were around before, and now tablets were around, so it must follow that they’re a replacement, a future link in the evolutionary chart. Only instead of a man-monkey walking in front of an ape, it was an iPad ambling about toward the future ahead of a weeping MacBook.

Things didn’t work out that way. Tablet sales more or less plateaued, and the armchair Nostradamuses had to concede that even with a Bluetooth keyboard attached to an iPad, there were some tasks for which a computer still excelled at.

Apple continued to pour money into revamping the Mac lineup with Apple-designed chips, and sales more or less held steady. I still know of very few people who don’t own a laptop or who’ve swapped out a tablet in place of a laptop.

So will the iPhone be gone totally in 10 years time or will it, like the computer, soldier on in a somewhat reduced but still useful capacity? Tap me on the shoulder in 10 years, and I’ll write a follow-up.