As you suggest part of the confusion is a lack of an agreed-upon definition of "bubble." Another part is poorly defining what constitutes the bubble. Is the bub

As you suggest part of the confusion is a lack of an agreed-upon definition of "bubble." Another part is poorly defining what constitutes the bubble. Is the bubble technology in general? Obviously not -- people aren't going to stop using computers like they stopped buying tulip bulbs. So it's easy to point to that, say "look, 5 billion smartphones!" and conclude that there cannot be a bubble, unless you expect everything to stop using smartphones. On the other hand, there may well be some bubble-esque things going on in the VC/startup area. It's a bit of sleight of hand to try to disprove that by looking at smartphone sales, because those are generally all sold by big established companies like Apple and Samsung, not by startups. Personally, I don't expect the startup scene to come crashing to the ground any time soon, but at the same time it helps to be more precise in defining what exactly the bubble is supposed to be. The fact that Apple and Samsung continue to turn a profit doesn't necessarily have anything to do with startups like Snapchat.