The gadget that ate all gadgets

In business, a "category killer" is a chain of giant, single-purpose stores that slays the competition. But there's a new kind of category killer out there more fearsome than any other: the smart phone, which this week laid waste to yet another category of product.

Cisco announced it will close the Flip video business it had bought just two years earlier for $590 million. Flip's little video cameras created a sensation when they first came out, but now more and more of us have a remarkably versatile device in our pockets and purses that does the same job.

The folks at Flip needn't sulk alone. All those iPhones and BlackBerrys and Droids have also more or less obviated telephones, still cameras, pagers, radios, record players, GPS navigation devices and compasses -- to say nothing of calendars, dictionaries, maps and notepads.

Alarm clocks, wristwatches and timers of all kinds are toast. Wallets are next -- a smart phone is practically a mobile bank -- and in a pinch an iPhone can serve as a flashlight, a document scanner and a bar-code reader.

For makers of such items, that's trouble, as is the blinding speed of technological change. The Flip video cam went from must-have to ho-hum in just four short years.

Smart phones will be around a lot longer, precisely because they seem able to do everything for everybody and are always on hand. But we're still not impressed -- and we won't be, until we can use a smart phone as a bottle opener at a picnic.