We’re living in a funny sort of ultra-connected time where no consumer tech company can keep its secrets secret. So when I gaze out toward the approaching Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, I can already tell you that it will bring perhaps the most diverse selection of smartphone forms, sizes, designs, and specifications we’ve yet seen. MWC 2019 will be defined by this diversity, with companies straining at the edges of conventional design to try and come up with an original idea, an attention-grabbing concept, or just a good old gimmick that will differentiate their product from all the rest. In simple terms, things are going to get weird.
Over the many years that I’ve been attending MWC, I’ve also noticed two primary routes of advancement for the majority of phone manufacturers.
Path A is to copy Apple. Let’s just be upfront about it. Copying the iPhone is how Samsung, Xiaomi, and Huawei — the three others in the top four global smartphone manufacturers, beside Apple — got their start, and it’s served many other companies well. This method involves taking your existing flagship device, comparing it to the current iPhone plus rumors about the next iPhone, and then bringing your design closer to that ideal. Examples? You couldn’t walk 10 steps at MWC last year without seeing notched iPhone X copycats, and Asus’ was one of the most egregious, if only because of the company’s size and stature as a PC component maker.
Path B is to pursue being first without regard for much else. This approach assumes that the consumer is fickle, easily distractible, and unsatisfied with merely incremental improvements. The more dramatic the novelty and the more visually appealing and recognizably different it is, the better. No one is immune to this line of thinking, and its basic premise is correct: when Samsung tried to reissue the Galaxy S8 as a more refined but not-really-different S9, the market responded by slashing its sales. Hence the introduction of the Galaxy Fold headline-grabber of this week.