Resolution criteria

This market will resolve to YES if, in any calendar year prior to January 1, 2100, smartphones are deemed to have become extinct globally. Otherwise, this market will resolve to NO on January 1, 2100.

For the purpose of this market, "smartphone extinction" is defined by meeting at least one of the following conditions:

• Shipment Volume: Global annual shipments of smartphones fall below 10 million units in a single calendar year, as reported by leading market intelligence firms (such as IDC, Canalys, Gartner, or their direct corporate successors).

• Production Cessation: Major tech and business publications (e.g., Bloomberg, Reuters, Wired) reach a clear consensus that hand-held touchscreen smartphones are no longer manufactured, sold, or supported for general consumer use globally.

Definitions:

• Smartphone: A hand-held mobile communication device featuring an integrated touchscreen interface, a mobile operating system (such as iOS, Android, or their direct evolutionary successors), and the capability to run third-party applications.

• Wearables (like smart glasses, smart rings, or neural implants) or stationary ambient computing devices do not qualify as smartphones, even if they perform similar cellular and computing functions.

Background

Since the launch of the iPhone in 2007, the touchscreen smartphone has become the dominant paradigm of personal computing globally. However, numerous technologists and industry figures have speculated on what will eventually succeed it.

Proponents of the "smartphone extinction" theory point to the rise of spatial computing (such as augmented and virtual reality glasses), ambient artificial intelligence, wearable pins, and brain-computer interfaces (BCIs like Neuralink) as technology that could make carrying a physical slab of glass obsolete. Industry leaders, including Nokia CEO Pekka Lundmark and Elon Musk, have predicted that physical phones will eventually be displaced by direct-to-body interfaces, wearable AI devices, or neural nodes in the coming decades.

Conversely, skeptics argue that the extreme utility, mature supply chains, and ergonomic convenience of a pocket-sized screen make the smartphone highly resilient, suggesting it may remain a primary computing form factor for the rest of the 2100s.