Smartphone killed the calculator star. Some thoughts... and data too

[emece67]

I also think that, after the Pioneer series, all hp scientific machines are mainly crap, with perhaps the sole exception of some of the flagship models (say 50g?). From the 33s up to now they have obvious mechanical, software or both kinds of flaws.

But that does not change the fact that scientific handheld calculators are an old fashioned product whose golden times have passed and whose current main public are just we.

Will any present day student spend 200+€ in a true, high quality handheld scientific calculator when his/her smartphone can more or less do the same? And, if the calculator app in the phone cannot do it, Wolfram Alpha or any other online tool will. And, for the more challenging, application specific problems, a PC based tool will exist to solve them.

Today university students do buy calculators just because they can use it at (some) exams. If smartphones/PCs were allowed at exams, not a single university student will buy a calculator. There are large amounts of used scientific calculators at sell at the end of each academic year, as students do not perceive these machines as everyday tools, but as the tool needed to pass exams, so: no more exams, no more the need to have it.

The lack of a real keyboard is not a problem for young people, they have spent years typing at their smartphones with no problems at all.