Samsung's launch of its Galaxy Note 10 this week comes at a critical inflection point for the consumer electronics industry: an industry which has been riding on the back of the mobile phone for a decade now, and which may well find itself searching for another back to ride on, if phone sales don't pick up soon.

Last week, the technology research company Gartner released its figures for mobile phone sales, predicting that they will decline in 2019 by 2.5 per cent, to a nice, round 1.5 billion phones sold around the globe.