tioned in 1. of Section 2, various social systems must be reformed to fully benefit from the merits of new technologies and realize substantial productive improvement and economic growth.

U.S. economist Robert Solow said, “Productivity is not everything, but in the long run, it is almost everything.” It must be noted that productivity defines the medium to long-term affluence of a country. History indicates that while railways, automobiles, ICT in the ICT revolution in the 1990s and other general-purpose technologies were not necessarily accepted in a universal manner, regions’ or countries’ economic growth depended on whether they could utilize them to improve productivity.

The dissemination of smartphones and relevant services, and data distributed through the dissemination have potential to match supply and demand on an individual, real-time basis to contribute to productivity improvement and economic growth and change society. It is hoped that businesses and consumers will utilize smartphones and relevant services, and data distribution to realize economic growth and social change.

### 3. Considering Post-Smartphone Society

## (1) Evolving Information Terminals and Scenes for Their Use

### A. Replacement of the Leading Actor in the Mobile World Congress

As explained in the previous paragraph, the smartphone economy including upper-layer applications and services is expected to evolve further as consumption using fully disseminated smartphones increases qualitatively and quantitatively. Meanwhile, growth in shipments of smartphones as information terminals has rapidly slowed down. Annual growth in smartphone shipments decelerated from 58.5% in the 2010-2011 period to 1.7% in the 2015-2016 period.

### B. Spreading AI Speakers Recognizing Voice Data

The replacement of the leading actor of information terminals has been indicated by the Mobile World Congress, one of the world’s largest events for the communications industry. Remarkable in the MWC2017 were AI speakers that numerous companies are developing as terminals replacing smartphones. Some AI speakers have already been put into the market (Figure 1-3-3-1).

### C. Graphics Data Utilization and AR/VR

As computer processing speed has improved with smartphones and tablets disseminating, AR technologies to display supplementary information on photo images have increasingly been used along with VR technologies to utilize computer graphics for creating virtual spaces on-screen.

As of 2017, AR technologies are most frequently used for consumer entertainment at game and amusement facilities. However, they are expected to connect cyber and real spaces for deepening data distribution and contribute to creating values in business areas including construction work and public transportation systems.

## (2) Communications Infrastructure Used Increasingly as General-Purpose Technology

### A. Transition of Communication Systems and Business Models

The mobile phone industry’s communication system has so far been replaced every five to 10 years. As the fourth-generation (4G) mobile communication system has been disseminating steadily in developed countries, the fifth-generation (5G) system planned to be introduced in the 2020s has become a topic being frequently talked about in Japan and other countries. The 5G system features not only ultrafast speed but also connection of numerous devices and low latency.

While 4G and earlier systems have been used mainly for “humans,” the 5G system is assumed to connect “things” via the Internet. In the 5G world, communication business operators may partner with various companies regardless of business area to generalize the B2B2X pattern and generate an infinite number of business models.

### B. Communications Industry to Promote Growth in Other Industries

The MWC2017 sponsor set the event’s main theme as “The Next Element,” noting that mobile communications will become “the next element” for growth and innovation in all other industries. The telecommunications industry in the world is looking at other industries for new growth.

IoT contents have evolved through technology development and discussions in the past three years. IoT is now interpreted not only as a means for collecting information with small sensors but also as a solution for han

Figure 1-3-3-1 Voice data-recognizing AI speakers

Launching	Overseas service cases	Japanese service cases
By 2016	ECHO (Amazon (U.S.))Google Home (Google (U.S.))NUGU (SK Telecom (South Korea))
2017	Harman Kardon Invoke (Microsoft (U.S.))HomePod (Apple (U.S.))	WAVE (LINE)petoco (NTTDocomo)au Home (KDDI)Xperia Agent (Sony Mobile Communications)