For much of the developed world, 2013 marked the beginning of a new technological era. More than half the people in North America, the UK, Japan, South Korea and the Nordic countries now own a smartphone, market researchers have concluded. By next year, the rest of western Europe will join that mobile majority.

The rise of the smartphone has already created new winners and losers in the consumer electronics market. According to a November estimate by analysts at US investment bank Canaccord Genuity, Apple and Samsung captured a “remarkable” 109 per cent (correct) of handset industry profits in the third quarter of 2013, a figure that makes sense only if the losses suffered by suppliers such as BlackBerry, Nokia and Taiwan’s HTC are counted as “negative profits”.

But it is not just their mobile rivals’ earnings that Apple’s iPhone and Samsung’s Galaxy devices have gobbled up. Cameras, music and radio players, alarm clocks, navigation systems, even torches and compasses are now absorbed into a glowing screen.