Quote - Smart phones are full fledged computers but many people use them as little more than appliances. How many of them tinker with the OS – I doubt you can without special software.

Well, for iphone, and the IOS operating system, you need XCode and an Apple Developer subscription (a paid one if you want to test on an actual device or publish).

Apple have locked down access to the actual operating system of course, for the most part. I'm talking really about "app" development.

For Android, a copy of Eclipse will do it... along with the SDK etc.

In order to do this development work you need a traditional workstation computer (a mac if you want to develop for IOS using Xcode).

Likewise for designing any form of professional grade graphics.

I guess the point I'd make is that as long as content for the new paradigm devices requires to be coded / drawn / rendered, a smaller, but entirely vital subset of "computer" users will require something at least equivalent to what we now expect in a "workstation" computer. This will underpin the market availability for graphics prosumers / hobbyists, I'd hope.

I don't think that the format of the interface that the end-user designer or developer needs will be able to be changed too radically, any time soon.

Although we may well see a lot of the processing power moved into the cloud.

The limit to this, however, is network connectivity. Until internet access bandwidth limits are more universally overcome, there are some real limits here I think.

Thin client technology can overcome this to an extent. Although currently, thin clients are, as far as I know, not yet suitable for higher end graphics applications.