It’s easy to identify something that’s going to take the world by storm. Just look for the product that’s quickest to be labelled a fad. To be discounted is a serious concern. But we can look directly at a few examples from the past decade that have redefined the world and the way that we look at it. Almost every single one of them was quickly slandered by the media before becoming a runaway success.
In 2001, the question was asked ”could the electronic textbook take the world by storm?” Well, it certainly did. Amazon’s Kindle sold three million devices in 2009. In 2005, an article by The Register asked if the iPod could indeed be a fad. They were wrong too, with Apple’s “declining” sales in 2013 having been 12.7 million devices. Even the iPhone attracted such labels with Paul Thurrott asking in 2008 if the iPhone’s touchscreen-based success would be short-lived. Clearly not, and we shouldn’t need to give statistics to back that up. Everything is technically a fad but it’s just part of what’s next.