>I think that this article does discredit how much smartphones have accomplished. Now anybody with a modern smartphone has a decent camera. Anybody has access to full Google search results in their pocket. It's possible that soon your smartphone will be your laptop (see Ubuntu Edge, and augmented reality setups that are being developed). Smartphones may one day be able to form their own meshnet using bluetooth.

I think the article and even you underestimate the impact of smart phones and mobile devices. There has been an incredible windfall of technologies, financed by the exponential growth of the smart phone market:

* Power saving microprocessors

* Ultra high resolution display technology

* MEMS sensors

* High power density batteries

* Many layer PCBs

* Size reduction of passive SMD components (0402 and smaller)

* High rate wireless transmission

* High fracture strengths glass

And many more I am probably forgetting.

All these technologies enable innovation in smaller markets that would otherwise not have been able to finance this incredible development.

For example Quadrocopters, cheap drones sold as toys but stuffed with incredible technology, would be multi-million secret military projects without the smart phone industry.