There is an arc to fashion and an art to making money from it. Marketing chichi new products begins with the exclusive few. The rich are allowed to join in if they cough up for the privilege. Then the real fortunes are made when the hoi polloi are queuing round the corner. Eventually, though, everybody has a fondue set.

Consider the current enthusiasm for smartphones, likely to feature heavily at the annual industry shindig in Barcelona starting on Monday. The success of Apple’s iPhone has moved the category from the functional to the highly desirable, allowing manufacturers to charge a premium for the features and hardware on offer. Telecoms operators are also shifting handset subsidies towards the devices – quite rationally, as they can sign customers up for lucrative data services. IDC, a research group, estimates that while the global handset market will shrink slightly from the 1.22bn phones sold in 2008 to 1.2bn this year, smartphones will be a ray of light. Defined as devices capable of running third-party software, it forecasts that smartphone unit shipments will increase by 9 per cent to 172m.