In the 15 years since the iPhone was released, we know that technology has permeated our lives. Tech has changed politics, industries, entertainment, culture, and human relationships, for better or worse.
The march of technology has also come with this perplexing reality: any technology of the iPhone era cannot be an unqualified success.
I’d argue that one smartphone-age consumer internet company has emerged as the undisputed winner in terms of popularity and financial potential, with its Facebook and Instagram apps, Meta.
(The company was founded in 2004, but Facebook started when smartphones were made, so I would classify it as the age of the iPhone.)
All other iPhone Internet user companies experience incomplete results due to relatively small number of users, questionable finances, uncertain growth prospects, risk of death or any of the above. And there are concerns that even Metta might not be healthy, as my colleague Mike Isaacs wrote on Tuesday. Also, uh, meta has contributed to some serious problems in our world.
I know this sounds ridiculous. In the last 15 years, technology has conquered everything. How can we be relatively certain that there are so few technology companies clinging to the Middle Ages?
I will spend the rest of this newsletter making my case. Feel free to disagree or yell at me (respectfully!) at ontech@nytimes.com.
First, in my review I’m making strides to avoid Google web searches, e-commerce sites like Amazon and Alibaba, and Netflix streaming video. Perhaps they are the long-term champions of technology, but they are the first generation of the Internet. I’m also not counting the technologies that are mostly used in business. When smartphones first hit our pockets and their popularity was supercharged by those tiny supercomputers, I only looked at consumer companies that were either fledgling or unborn.
Beyond Meta, the most popular apps of the past 15 years have giant stars.
Billions of people use YouTube, but it’s not big business in terms of its size and influence. If Google hadn’t bought Video in 2006, the year before the iPhone, YouTube might not exist today.
Twitter is influential, but underutilized and chronically under-regulated. Snapchat is a platform for online creative ideas and is constantly copied by Meta and others. But it may not last, and it hasn’t proven to be a viable company. Uber and Spotify are examples of bad businesses turning good technologies. They’re not consistently profitable, and some savvy tech watchers believe those business models simply don’t work.
Fads in e-commerce come and go. All apps in China like WeChat and Meituan will probably never go global. TikTok — If its popularity continues, if it can consistently make money and worry about Chinese ownership, we see the app as forever haunted.
Will these stars of the iPhone age be around in 10 years or will they go the way of Yahoo and MySpace? (For Gen Z readers, Yahoo and MySpace were popular sites not too long ago.)
This leaves us with Meta. Again, the company has its problems, but so far it has adapted to people’s rapidly changing online habits. The company is also very, very, very good at making money. up to date.
Without the ability to turn popularity into cash and keep people glued to the app as their preferences change, you can’t be a winner. Very few companies have been able to do both consistently over the past decade.
How come we have so much technology and so few winning tech companies?
Creative nature could easily have left a lot of road kill. In earlier technological eras, perhaps only one or a few sustainable firms emerged. Microsoft and Apple were big winners in moving computers into people’s homes. Google, Amazon and Netflix were the stars of the first generation of the web. There were many other technologies and technology companies that were forgotten along the way.
And if you look beyond the technologies that people use for business, the past 15 years have had many winners. Cloud computing – shorthand for digital tasks performed over the Internet rather than on specific computers owned by people or companies – repurposed Internet services and corporate technology. Cloud computing has made many tech companies rich, including Amazon, Microsoft, and Salesforce.
Artificial intelligence, driverless cars, and technological innovations may spawn more tech companies that further blur the lines between the virtual and the real world. But that is not the case in today’s technological reality.
The internet and smartphones were world-changing revolutions. And the medium has become more durable and powerful than any other part.
If you do not receive this newsletter in your inbox, Please register here.
Before we go…
-
Tech is still rich. There are also stress lines. The companies Google and Microsoft They stated that they experienced lower income growth than the income growth in 2021. But my colleagues reported that the companies were confident they would remain healthy despite the deteriorating economic outlook and other challenges.
Front Point: Shopify, which helps businesses set up online stores, said it estimated the extent to which people would continue the e-commerce habits learned during the pandemic. The financial results, announced Wednesday, were dire, and Shopify said it would lay off 10 percent of its workforce.
Read More from DealBook.
-
Tech is rapidly changing the language for ASL. My colleague Amanda Morris writes about how video calling, smartphones and social media have helped accelerate changes in American Sign Language. Evolutionary changes — including tighter signs that fit on tiny smartphone screens — have sometimes created misunderstandings between generations of deaf culture, she writes.
-
Say goodbye to “off”. That’s the sound when a character dies in the virtual world of Roblox. But Roblox said on Tuesday that the signature sound was removed due to “licensing issues,” video game news site Kotaku reported. Roblox fans have started an online campaign to bring back “Off”.
For this hug
A food festival in Halifax, Nova Scotia, features a very exotic oyster mascot named Pearl. The mascot’s oyster shell costume has at least 13 eyes and dark red lips. i like this.
We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think about this newsletter and what else you’d like us to explore. You can reach us at ontech@nytimes.com
If you do not receive this newsletter in your inbox, Please register here. You can also read Passed by tech columns.
