Jan 2, 2019 · 22m · a16z
a16z Podcast | What Comes After the Smartphone
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of the a16z Podcast, host Michael Copeland and tech analysts Benedict Evans and Steven Sinofsky analyze the historical evolution of computing platforms and the maturity of the smartphone era. They explore how hardware S-curves drive innovation upward into cloud, IoT, and enterprise software layers to define the next phase of tech expansion.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. How this is scored →
The host as informed peer 2.2 Guest teaching 5.0 Guest disagreement 0.8 The host pushing back 0.3
speaking balance: gold is the host, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 3:52 Pushback on 'boring' label
Sinofsky gently reframes Evans' assertion that smartphones have become boring, noting instead that they have become predictable while innovation moves up the stack.
Hardest push from the host ▶ 3:39 Host pins down PC death claimMichael Copeland explicitly intervenes to demand clarity, pressing Evans to confirm if he is directly declaring the end of the PC world.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 6:56 Mainframe MIPS historical lessonSinofsky delivers detailed historical metrics on mainframe compute power, revealing that peak mainframe MIPS across the entire global industry equaled only about 200 modern MacBooks.
The host holds their own ▶ 13:11 Host details smart home kit fragmentationsCopeland demonstrates strong domain understanding by highlighting the current friction in IoT where individual devices like door locks require dedicated hub routers and separate screens.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The host as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The host pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hardware Perception: iPhone, Surface, and S-Curve Maturity | 2 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Host Michael Copeland sets up the topic with a comparison between the iPhone and Microsoft Surface receptions, prompting Benedict Evans to explain S-curve maturity. The guest provides historical analogies about sailing ships and spy planes to explain tech obsolescence. Host interjects briefly to confirm whether Evans is calling the end of the PC era. | |
| Innovation Moving Up the Platform Stack | 0 | 5 | 1 | 0 | The host remains completely silent as Sinofsky and Evans dialogue back-to-back about innovation shifting up the platform stack to messaging and services. Because the host does not participate, host expertise and pushback scores are zero. Guests maintain a cooperative and insightful discussion. | |
| Historical Perspectives on Scale Across Computing Eras | 3 | 6 | 1 | 0 | Copeland opens with a question about whether market power shifts away from handset makers, prompting a historical masterclass from Sinofsky and Evans. Sinofsky contextualizes compute scale by comparing mainframe MIPS to modern MacBooks and tracing growth through word processors and PCs. The host chimes in with minor commentary while absorbing the historical overview. | |
| The Search for 10x Scale, IoT, and Cloud Integration | 4 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Copeland actively participates by exploring what comes after the smartphone, offering concrete examples of IoT fragmentation such as garage doors and lightbulbs needing separate hubs. Guests explain that IoT and cloud services extend existing smartphone chip architectures rather than creating a whole new 10x hardware paradigm. The dynamic is collaborative and analytical. | |
| Mobile Ecosystem Supremacy vs. Legacy PC Architecture | 1 | 6 | 1 | 0 | Evans and Sinofsky dominate the segment, explaining how mobile ARM ecosystems dwarf legacy Wintel architecture and draw all engineering talent. The host only offers brief verbal agreements while guests outline the decline of x86 dominance. | |
| The Future Tech Stack and Startup Opportunities | 3 | 5 | 0 | 0 | Copeland directs the conversation toward startup opportunities within the future stack. Evans maps the hardware and OS layers, while Sinofsky details B2B software opportunities built on cloud platforms like AWS and mobile OS targets. The episode concludes on an agreeable and forward-looking note. |
Statements from this episode (15)
Copeland: Smartphones dwarfed all prior computing platforms in scale
“And then came the mobile phone, which, in the form of the smartphone, has dwarfed them all.”
Evans: Apple, Google, and Facebook won the smartphone and messaging wars
“The sort of, the feeling you have in mobile right now is we're kind of at the end of one wave, and we haven't got another wave coming up yet, so we've kind of had the smartphone wars, and Apple and Google both kind of won, and we've had the messaging wars, and…”
Evans: Tech platforms reach peak perfection right before becoming obsolete
“The things tend to look best, and they tend to look most refined, and they tend to have all the really coolest stuff just before they're about to be completely obsolete.”
Evans: PC innovation is being perfected because the PC era is over
“And you could kind of look at it the other way around, I think, that what's happening in the kind of the PC world is it's being perfected because it's kind of over.”
Sinofsky: Mobile platform innovation has shifted up the software stack
“What's really happening now is, is the innovation has just moved up the stack. And now you're just going to start to see like constellations of innovation.”
Evans: Mobile OS platforms integrate services much deeper than PC OSs
“Unlike, say, a web browser on a, either a Windows or a Mac, where the web browser was the platform and the Windows or the Mac computer wasn't really where you were building internet services. Whereas on a smartphone, not only are you building in the web browse…”
Evans: Stable smartphone platforms enable a Cambrian explosion of innovation
“So you've got this kind of Cambrian explosion of innovation on top of the smartphone now that that's become like a relatively solid platform where you kind of know what you're dealing with and all these things have become possible.”
Benedict Evans: Global active smartphones will reach 5 to 6 billion
“Almost all of those will become smartphones in the next couple of years, or well over a billion are now, and so we'll go to two billion smartphones if you add in tablets, maybe two and a half, as opposed to three hundred million PCs, And we'll go to five to si…”
Sinofsky: New computing platforms scale by attracting non-users of prior platforms
“The interesting thing is for each of those, they didn't sell like the first people to buy minis weren't the people who bought all the mainframes. They were all the people who didn't buy the mainframe. And for the people who bought, like, the PCs, they weren't …”
Evans: Drones and smart thermostats are essentially smartphones with wings
“An awful lot of this stuff is it's actually smartphone components. I mean, it's obviously like a thermostat or a drone or all of those kinds of things are basically just smartphones with wings.”
Evans: Worldwide ATMs Ran Windows XP Until Recently
“The three million ATMs on Earth all run Windows XP until quite recently.”
Evans: Wintel Platform Share Will Decline to 10% of Computing Market
“The Wintel ecosystem now, as a percentage of total computing, so including tablets and smartphones and everything else, is now sort of 15% of unit sales, and it's going to go down, it's going to go maybe not 10%, but you know, it may go down to 10%”
Sinofsky: Apple PowerPC Failed Due to Insufficient Scale vs. Intel
“This is basically what happened to Apple. It's like, it was just too small to support the innovation at the scale needed to compete with what was going on at Intel. And like, there just weren't enough electrical engineers designing chips to be competitive.”