Despite the hopeful signs coming from Huawei and Samsung, the smartphone is increasingly just a commodity. Now, the covetous glances of gadget lovers are turned elsewhere, to home hubs and virtual reality devices and, of course, driverless cars. These cars were a major theme of last week’s headlines, from the tragic (the Tesla accident) to the over-optimistic (Alibaba’s attempt to resurrect its smartphone operating system, Aliyun, as a connected car OS). And the European Commission was active here too, bringing together a host of organizations to a super-club focused on connected and driverless vehicles. The work program does not even kick off until next year, and the number of bodies involved almost guarantees this effort will spend plenty of money…