Apparently the talk making the rounds on the floor at CES is that smartphone screens are going to get … smaller?
Greg Topel, CEO of Evanston-based Tangible Haptics, is in Vegas for the Big Show. His company makes technology that lets you feel what you’re looking at.
After a phone chat for another article, and some small talk about the balmy desert heat outside his hotel and the frozen tundra outside my office, he offered a surprising take on the future of the smartphone screens that I might have brushed aside were Topel not a smart guy who spends most of his time thinking about screens.
His take goes something like this: Better tablets, along with ultra-light, tablet-like laptops, are making it easier for people to take big-screen devices wherever they go.
Sales of the big-screened iPhone 6 Plus continue to be strong. But Topel said people are starting to realize that their phone screens can’t get much bigger without being awkward to carry and hold up to your ear. So even though screens seem to be getting bigger, that trend will turn.
“That’s what I’m hearing from people out here,” Topel said. “People think the screens are going to get smaller, not bigger.”
It should be noted that at least one recent study predicts that tablet sales will slow down, increasing 8 percent in 2015 after several years of double-digit growth. But this same Gartner study predicts growth in PC sales, including highly portable, ultra-mobile premium laptops.
Could it really be that our smartphones might someday be used mostly as — gasp — phones? That’s crazy talk, of course. There will still be texting and map checking and email peeking and Facebook posting and food ordering and avoiding eye contact or conversation when waiting in lines.
Maybe Topel is all wrong. But, in case he isn’t, you heard it here first. Smaller screens.