Ethereum platform and smartcontracts could be used for example for decentralized casinos, insurances and many others
Please take into account that Ethereum project is still in beta version
But the same applies to any new platform today.
It is not an Ethereum's unique feature any more.
They even say the similar smart contracts feature is going to be applied to Bitcoin network.
But, I haven't explored technical details on how exactly they are going to implement that.
To make something works well it needs a lot of testing, and I think Ethereum has adventage of over 2 years of testing its solutions.
I think future of Etherum depends on how PoS switch will work.
If PoS will work well I think we will see very high prices, but it's possibility to significant price drop if PoS fail or will be delayed, of course