{"id":527,"date":"2014-01-17T12:29:09","date_gmt":"2014-01-17T20:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/formidableengineeringconsultants.com\/?p=527"},"modified":"2026-05-03T21:17:33","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T05:17:33","slug":"the-end-of-hardware","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/formidableengineeringconsultants.com\/?p=527","title":{"rendered":"The End of Hardware"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"iStock_000016388919XSmall\"<\/a>Back in 1992, after the Berlin Wall fell and communist states\u00a0were toppled one after another, Francis Fukuyama<\/a> authored and published a book entitled The End of History and The Last Man<\/a>.\u00a0 It received much press at the time for its bold and seemingly definitive statement (specifically that whole ‘end of history’ thing with the thesis\u00a0that capitalist liberal democracy\u00a0is that\u00a0endpoint).\u00a0The result was\u00a0much press, discussion, discourse and theorizing\u00a0and presumably a higher sales volume\u00a0for a book that likely still graces many a bookshelf, binding still uncracked.\u00a0 Now it’s my turn to be bold.<\/p>\n

Here it is:<\/p>\n

With the advent and popularization of the smartphone, we are now at the end of custom personal consumer hardware. <\/strong><\/p>\n

That’s it.\u00a0 THE END OF HARDWARE.\u00a0 Sure there will be form factor changes and maybe a few additional new hardware features but all of these changes will be incorporated in smartphone handsets as that platform.<\/p>\n

Maybe I’m exaggerating –\u00a0but only a little.\u00a0 Really, there’s not much more room for hardware innovation in the smartphone platform and as it is currently deployed, it contains the building blocks of any custom personal consumer device. Efforts are clearly being directed at gadgets to replace those cell phones.\u00a0 That might be smart watches, wearable computers, tablets or even phablets. But these are really just changes in form not function.\u00a0 Much like the evolution of the PC, it appears that mobile hardware has reached the point where the added value of hardware has become incremental and less valuable.\u00a0 The true innovation is in the manner in which software can be used to connect resources and increase the actual or perceived power that platform.<\/p>\n

In the PC world, faster and faster microprocessors were of marginal utility to the great majority of end-users who merely used their PCs for reading email or doing PowerPoint.\u00a0 Bloated applications (of the sort that the folks at Microsoft<\/a> seem so pleased to develop and distribute<\/a>) didn’t even benefit from faster processors as much as they did from cheaper memory and faster internet connections.\u00a0 And now, we may be approaching that same place for mobile applications.\u00a0 The value of some of these applications is becoming limited more by the availability of on-device resources like memory and faster internet connections through the cell provider rather than the actual hardware features of the handset. \u00a0Newer applications are more and more dependent on big data and other cloud-based resources.\u00a0 The handset is merely a window into those data sets.\u00a0 A presentation layer, if you will.\u00a0 Other applications use the information collected locally from the device’s sensors and hardware peripherals (geographical location, speed, direction, scanned images, sounds, etc.) in concert with cloud-based big data to provide services, entertainment and utilities.<\/p>\n

In addition, and more significantly, we are seeing developing smartphone applications that use the phone’s peripherals to directly interface to other local hardware (like PCs, projectors, RC toys,\u00a0 headsets, etc.) to extend the functionality of those products.\u00a0 Why buy a presentation\u00a0remote<\/a> when you get an app<\/a>? Why buy a remote for your TV<\/a> when you can get an app<\/a>? Why buy a camera when you already have one on your phone? A compass? A flashlight? A GPS? An exercise monitor<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Any consumer-targeted handheld device need no longer develop an independent hardware platform. \u00a0You just develop an app to use the features of the handset that you need and deploy the app. \u00a0Perhaps additional special purpose sensor packs might be needed to augment the capabilities of the smartphone for specialized uses but any mass-market application can be fully realized using the handset as the\u00a0existing base and few hours of coding.<\/p>\n

And if you doubt that handset hardware development has plateaued \u00a0then consider the evolution of the Samsung Galaxy S3<\/a> to the Samsung Galaxy S4<\/a>. \u00a0The key difference between the two devices is the processor capabilities and the camera resolution. \u00a0The bulk of the innovations are pure software related and could have been implemented as part of the Samsung Galaxy S3 itself without really modifying the hardware. \u00a0The differences between the iPhone 4s and the iPhone 5s<\/a> were a faster processor, a better camera and a fingerprint sensor. \u00a0Judging from a completely unscientific survey of end-users that I know, the fingerprint sensor remains unused by most owners. An innovation that has no perceived value.<\/p>\n

The economics of this thesis is clear. \u00a0If a consumer has already spent $600 or so on a smartphone and lives most of their life on it anyway and carries it with them everywhere, are you going to have better luck selling them a new gadget for $50-$250 (that they have to order, wait for learn how to use, get comfortable with and then carry around) or an app that they can buy for $2 and download and use in seconds – when they need it?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in 1992, after the Berlin Wall fell and communist states\u00a0were toppled one after another, Francis Fukuyama authored and published a book entitled The End of History and The Last Man.\u00a0 It received much press at the time for its bold and seemingly definitive statement (specifically that whole ‘end of history’ thing with the thesis\u00a0that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,68,59,21,15],"tags":[64,66,43,44,27,46,40,39,60,6,24,38,58,89,36],"class_list":["post-527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gadgets","category-innovation","category-mobile","category-mobile-applications","category-software","tag-android","tag-apple","tag-cpu","tag-gpu","tag-hardware","tag-ideas","tag-ipad","tag-media","tag-mobility","tag-new","tag-reinvent","tag-revolutionary","tag-risk","tag-software","tag-usability"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/formidableengineeringconsultants.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/formidableengineeringconsultants.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/formidableengineeringconsultants.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/formidableengineeringconsultants.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/formidableengineeringconsultants.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=527"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/formidableengineeringconsultants.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":826,"href":"https:\/\/formidableengineeringconsultants.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527\/revisions\/826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/formidableengineeringconsultants.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/formidableengineeringconsultants.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/formidableengineeringconsultants.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}