In the summer of 2000, I did my MBA internship with a management consultancy company based in Barcelona – level of 34 of this building, actually.

I was part of a multi-national team advising a major telecommunications company bidding for third-generation (3G) mobile-phone licenses across Europe. That year, several governments had been auctioning 3G licences and values reached fever pitch – for instance, the auction in the UK, raised the equivalent of 2.5% of the Gross National Product.

While a large proportion of the population was, by then, using a mobile phone, the trend was for small phones. Indeed, if our focus groups were anything to go by, no one would ever find any use for a camera on their mobile phone. Ever! Yet, recently published statistics reveal that nearly 9 in 10 children aged 12-15 year-olds, in the UK, now own a smartphone. And 1 in 5 mobile…