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> Everybody generally wants a few core services from their smartphone: send and receive brief messages, directions, ride hailing, listen to a podcast or some streaming service, mobile payments, take photos (perhaps most importantly).

Complete access to a large % of Western civilization's collective knowledge is also kind of nice.

Mostly used for restaurant open hours and random Wikipedia articles. But still.

Knowing where nearby gas stations are, checking when a store closes, comparison price shopping, checking nutrition facts, there are many uses for a smart phone outside of the ones you listed. And, as always, the long tail is long.



Why only Western Civilization? Why not the collected knowledge of all of humanity?


Wikipedia has a Western bias.

Linguistic barriers prevent lots of information from East Asia from being accessible to westeners.

Large portions of the world don't yet have super organized repositories of knowledge.




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