Why 5G Will Make All Current PCs, Smartphones Obsolete

The Qualcomm 5G media event in Hawaii last week (I’m sure your hearts are all bleeding for me). One of the more interesting sessions had people from Qualcomm, Verizon, AT&T and Samsung on stage talking about what will happen when 5G reaches a point where it is ubiquitous. While 5G will get to critical mass (where it is a viable and desirable feature) in developed countries in mid- to late 2019, it will likely be 2020 or later when it is so common you can depend on it being everyplace you need it to be. This last step is a critical one for folks to reconsider where apps run and begin to rethink what apps do. But the panel also argued that it will change dramatically what we consider a mobile platform to be, because the OS may move as well.  Let’s fast forward a couple of years and talk about what 2020+ with 5G likely will look like. It is interesting to note that when Steve Jobs first conceived of the iPhone, he thought all the apps would exist in the cloud and not run locally.  It was a stupid idea not because it wasn’t compelling, but because, in the early parts of last decade, cloud apps didn’t work well. Besides, Apple sucked at doing anything relating to servers and hosted content. What I find interesting is that one of the things that defined Jobs was hitting at the right time. For instance, Xerox had the mouse and GUI first, but Apple had it at the right time; Phillips had the PDA first, but Apple’s iPad got it right first; and IBM had the smartphone first, but Apple got it right first (ironically with a huge touch screen as well). Being first apparently doesn’t count in tech; being first and getting it right does.