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No device will ever die completely. But it's foolish to think that their sells won't be affected by the new smartphones.
It all comes down to what is good enough for the average buyer. Is a smartphone's camera enough for your holiday pictures? For mine, it is. I just spent 2 weeks in Barcelona, Spain, and I used only my HTC Desire's built-in cameras to take pictures, and they have a pretty decent quality. They're pictures taken on vacation, so who cares if I haven't zoomed into that tiny microscopical detail of that plate on La Pedrera's wall? Or who cares if the lens wasn't polarized enough and the colours are "not precisely perfect"?
So, a smartphone's built-in camera is enough for me. And speaking of photography, I am your typical average-man, so you can take me as an example. My girlfriend's father, instead, who works as a photographer, will never, ever take a photo using a smartphone. Ever. He is somewhat an artist, and has his amazing (and costly) devices, both digital and film, and he can't conceive the idea of using something that makes pictures with lesser quality.
Speaking of reading devices, instead, I am not an average-man. I have precise needs and precise requests, like LONG battery life (I want my e-reader to last at least five full days without recharging, because in september for example I usually spend 5 days in the mountains living in a tent in the woods, with no electricity at all).
But the average man doesn't read as much as I, or you, do. He reads casually, and rarely. The average man will say "How cool! I can read books on my phone", and will use it once or twice to read The adventures of Huck Finn, but he is not someone who will ever feel the need to buy a Kindle or similar device.
Speaking of GPS devices: I have one. I use it. I love it. I have never gotten lost before buying one, but at the same time I have spent YEARS reading on paper and have never had one single problem. But now I use an e-reader, and do you know why? Because it makes my life easier, carrying many books with less weight for example. The same goes for my GPS: it makes my life easier allowing me not to bring with me many maps in my car, it SPEAKS so I don't have to look at the map all the time, and since I keep its maps updated it has failed me only ONCE.
Just FYI, the old paper maps were updated even less frequently than the digital GPS maps.
GPS devices are just maps that read themselves aloud, nothing more, nothing less. I have gone without them for years, sure, but now that they exist, and now that they are getting more and more precise and less faulty, I don't see a reason not to use them when I need to go to a place that I don't know, or to quickly find a cinema/ATM/restaurant in an area that I don't know.
I also lived perfectly well for years before buying my first PC, or before buying my first internet connection, but that doesn't mean that I have to continue living that way if the new technology makes my life easier.
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