Apple product launches may have lost some of their razzmatazz over the years but smartphones are in demand once again.

Wind back two years and their era was thought to be coming to a close. Samsung reported lower than expected sales and Apple stopped reporting quarterly iPhone shipment figures altogether. The pool of people without a smartphone had grown vanishingly small. In the US, for example, 88 per cent of teens and adults already owned a smartphone according to eMarketer. Improvements in new phones did not persuade existing owners to upgrade.

Apple and Samsung reacted by making phones more expensive, which allowed them to maintain revenue growth even as shipments stalled. This, however, left users even less willing to pay for frequent upgrades. In the US, the replacement cycle rose to almost three years. Like PCs before them, smartphones appeared to have reached saturation point.