Of course i am just taking light jibe but did we see the Apple of today in 2002? How about Google or Samsung?
If Vita had a SIM card and worked as with 3G is it considered a smartphone if you were able to make calls to other people with it using vo-ip programs?
The phone part of the "smartphone" is probably the most redundant and commoditive part of the phone that it is basically an after thought. Todays smartphones are just microformfactor personal computers now that can perfrom phone functions. I don't see why a gaming device cannot add phone functionality just how the iPod added phone functionality to their device.
It may be time to think outside of the box, there may be further disruptions to the telecommunications market and it may come from asia and not america. the writing is on the wall already with f2p companies in korea and china being part of this big change (as well as hardware vendors such as samsung and htc) and soon maybe nintendo will enter this market with their own platfrom based on their current portable offerings and future online software platforms.
a 3DS redesign that is more smartphone in design (clamshell but detachable second screen) but like the asus transformer for those who only want to have more limited gaming experiences. I am not saying this kind of thing will happen but did people really see apple being the top in phones 10 years ago? Did we see iOS beating Windows 10 years ago? what do people think will happen in 10 years in the OS space and who will be the biggest players as convergence of technology seem to be bringing all of these big tech firms together.
I remember when I had my first 3g touchscreen facechat smartphone and it was made by motorola in 2003
specs
http://www.gsmarena.com/motorola_a920-517.php
I thought that 10 years from then that we would get something like the Galaxy SII today but I didn't know that it would first come from apple. I also thought that windows would be the popular OS and that AMD would be the GPU and Intel the CPU most dominant in the smart phone space. In 2003 Apple announced the safari web browser and launched iTunes, the previous year they had just released the iPod which had still yet to take the world by storm. Most of us really did not see it coming and even if we did, we did not know from where it was coming from
I know people are talking a lot about the current platforms of iOS and Android like they will be the current incumbents for generations to come but it might not even last ten years and most of these big companies may know this to be true and are preparing for changes. Nintendo has been around since the 80's (the 1880's) and they would like to steer their ship long into a calm blue ocean for as long as they possibly can, but entering a turbulent and violent storm in a red ocean that is now the portable entertainment space is not something they are averse to as it is part of the cycle. You can be sure that nintendo has done some r&d with the smartphoen market and will enter the market if they can disrupt their way into it. Taking on apple head on is not the way they will do it of course but it will be done in an indirect way and on their own terms.