标签: consumer electronics

When the Consumer Electronics Show comes around every January, I bear a complex set of emotional reactions, the same ones that I have when I go into a local Big Box retailer to buy a personal electronics gadget. First there is anticipation of all the new features and capabilities that developers have come up with. Then there is resignation because over the years I have learned there will always be some flaw or oversight for which I will have to find a workaround. Third comes resentment at whatever has caused this to occur: penny-pinching, lack of planning, or ignorance – sometimes willful—of the consumers' needs and wants. The flaws I see in various consumer electronics devices are many, some unique to each type and some common to all. To deal with them I have a kit of tools that I keep at hand to work around the problems. The kit includes: Velcro, Super Glue, Elmer's water soluble glue, a variety of hooks and rings, various kinds of tape, soldering iron and solder, wire cutter and splicer, and safety pins and paper clips of various sizes. And for really tough cases, duct tape. For brevity's sake, here I will focus on just simple MP3 players, of which there must be a dozen different brands and within each brand, a dozen variations. But from what I have learned elsewhere, such as in a recent Jack Ganssle column on Android devices , the same sorts of problems occur no matter how far up the consumer electronics food chain you go in complexity and rampant " featureitis ". Invariably, MP3 players suffer from the same "more is better" malady that infects desktop computers and many consumer electronics devices. MP3 players have been stuffed with as large a screen as possible in a one or two inch square device, a USB connector, audio output, a microscopically sized microphone, and an FM Radio. On MP3 players, I appreciate the large screens that are now standard for viewing the titles of music and audio books. But most such devices also include a capability for viewing your favorite music videos. Images of a postage stamp-sized singer in which there is no detail? No, thanks. I would rather they had used the space to include additional gigabytes of solid state flash for storing even more books and songs. And the weaselly little pin-hole sized microphone capability? Be serious. The FM radio functionality is a nice extra, or would be if it really worked reliably. But reception is always iffy in such a small device. It is also the most prone to failure and, unfortunately, takes along much of the other functionality of the device with it. On one MP3 player, after the FM radio went out, I could still play my stored selections, but, I could not change the volume. On another, the FM radio worked OK and the volume worked – once – after which it would turn itself off and I would have to turn it back on and find my place in my selection again. The designers of the devices, and the companies that take them to market, must know that these problems could occur, because some of them include a reset button someplace on the device – usually a microscopically small pin hole into which you must stick a sharp point to restart the device. They know that they are pushing reliable operation to the edge, but still they try to cram in as much counter-productive functionality as they can. This is where one of the tools in my kit is useful: a safety pin that I have attached to my keychain for easy access. With it, I have an MP3 player that works most of the time. But regularly – and arbitrarily – it shuts down, until I bring it back to normal functioning by poking at the reset with my safety pin. The reliability and usability issues also extend to the accessories. My big bugaboos right now are the headsets and earplugs, both the ones that come with the device and the more expensive ones you have to go out and buy when the supplied ones stop functioning. For example, ear buds. Maybe my ear canals are abnormally small, but none of the buds fit into my ears and stay there. One of my solutions is the Elmer's water soluble glue. I rub a small amount around the edge of my ear entrance and the bud stays there nice and snug, Otherwise I have to spend more money to get an expensive set with a number of ear bud sizes and fits. Despite that, on some ear buds, when I push it in to fit snugly, the result is an inoperative ear speaker, full of static. Then there is the length of the ear phone cord. On average, the ones supplied with the MP3 player are 3 to 4 feet (convert to m) in length. I don't know about you, but my ears are not somewhere between my knees. Some of the more thoughtful companies supply the cord with an attached clip and direct you to fold up the unnecessary cord and attach it to this clip. Thanks for the thought, but it is an awkward solution and gets in my way. For a while my solution was to use my kit and cut out the extra length and splice what is left to get a shorter cord. But I stopped doing that. Too much trouble for something that has a lifetime of a few months. The cords on earbuds are extraordinarily thin and flimsy and have a tendency to break at the points where it attaches to the ear bud and to the earphone jack you plug into the MP3 player. I do what I can to extend the lifetime, using my Superglue to reinforce those weak points at regular intervals. That does not do anything about the cumbersome length of the cord. My first solution was to simply wrap it around my neck until the excess was gone. Now, I have kludged a solution that reduces effective length by half. It still hangs around my neck, earplugs on one side and earphone jack on the other. But I have used a large paper clip to create a sliding attachment much like on a trombone, with the cord from the ear buds inserted on one side and portion of the cord with the electrical plug to the MP3 player on the other, and tape in between to keep them separate. I now have a setup that is much less cumbersome, but flexible enough to fit the player itself into the pocket of my pants, coat ,or shirt, on the left or on the right, or attached to a neck chain—all without pulling the bud end from my ears. But the problems don't end there. Now suppose I have the MP3 player attached to a neck chain to keep it handy and easily viewable? Have you looked at the size of the holes for attachment, or where they are positioned?. For me, they're in the wrong place—at the "top" of the device. So if I have it on a neck chain and I reach down to see what is on the display, the image is upside down. To solve that I use one of the safety pins in my kit and attach it at the bottom of the device with Velcro so I can see the book and song titles right side up, Then I use Superglue to connect it permanently, attachment clamp down, so the safety pin ring hole at one end is available to attach to my neck chain. ( Are you following all of this? Perhaps I should have diagrammed some of it ). These are some of the more mundane and trivial—and least complicated—problems I have with consumer electronics devices. I have dealt with some of the more serious drawbacks from this user's point of view elsewhere in a column written several years ago titled "IPv6, RFID, GPS and finding lost devices. " Nothing was done then nor since about those problems that I can find. Nor do I expect anything to be done. And many years of experience with these devices tell me nothing will be done to deal with what I have written about here as well, sadly. Why? There are three possible reasons. First, perhaps no one but me sees them as problems, but I find that hard to believe. Second, as noted in a previous column on " It's usability testing, stupid! ", I don't think companies do the right kind of research to understand the users of their products. I know they do not understand me . Finally, it may not be in the interest of the device maker or accessory supplier to do so. If they fix it and make it more reliable, it will not malfunction and then there will be no reason to buy a replacement. Welcome to 21st Century consumer electronics!!  

Looking at the cornucopia of new product announcements that came out of the Consumer Electronics Show last January, and the market projections targeting these applications, you would think that it is the best of all possible worlds for developers of consumer devices.   Nothing could be further from the truth, despite the optimistic message from the CEA projecting that consumer electronics sales could top $1 trillion in 2011. What comes to mind when I hear and read about such optimistic projections is an image of Mad Comics' Alfred E. Newman caricature titled "What, me worry?"   I am doubtful about that $1 trillion prediction. But even if it turns out to be true, the more important numbers to look at in the consumer market are the profit margins, not just of the companies selling the devices, but of the companies providing the various hardware and software building blocks from which they are created. And what I see is paper-thin profit margins all around, more reminiscent of the tenths of a cent difference between profit and loss common in the U.S. supermarket industry.   You may think that such slim profit margins are tolerable if the volumes are there. But will they be? A lot of the optimistic chatter assumes that the current economic downturn will end soon and the electronics-mad consuming public especially in the United Stateswill return to its profligate buying habits of the previous two decades.   Not true. U.S. consumers have dug a deep financial hole that will take a while to get out of. When the "great recession of 2008-201X" first hit us globally, the numbers for the personal debt of the average U.S. household were truly frightening.   In 1974 total U.S. private household debt was $680 billion, about twice the U.S. government debt. By 2006 it had grown $12.8 trillion, four times the debt of the U.S. government . Also, the average household in 2008 owned 13 credit cards, with 40 percent of them carrying a balance, compared one credit card per family with just six percent carrying a balance in 1974.   Just as troubling has been the savings rate. In the mid-1970s U.S. consumers were setting aside about 14 percent of their disposable income into savings. But for most of the last decade since 2000, it has hovered at about one percent, several times dropping to near zero. Indeed, just before the downturn, the personal savings rate and sunk below zero into the negative range and by 2008, U.S. consumers were spending $800 billion more than they earned, much of that generated by borrowing against the mortgages on their homes, the value of which lenders had convinced them were going to continue to climb.   As a result of the house mortgage debacle that triggered a worldwide economic downturn, unemployment in the U.S. is hovering at about 10 percent. Not only are these unemployed not spending money on consumer electronics devices, the other 90 percent who are still employed are becoming much more conservative financially, and working feverishlynot to buy more consumer electronics devices and toysbut to pay off their debts as well as set aside monies for future disasters. That is reflected in the reversal in the trend on personal savings in the U.S, which by the beginning of 2010 has increased four fold from the 1% rate or less during the previous ten years.   Gone are the days where clever advertising and promotion could be used to convince a consumer that he or she desperately needs to buy the hottest new electronic device. The only thing that will change this is cost. Almost nothing I saw or read about CES this year 3D TV, large screen LCD TV, Internet TV, mobile TV, wirelessly connected netbooks, tablet PCs, and home entertainment systemswas compelling enough to tempt a consumer to pay a substantial amount to acquire it. While the just past Christmas season was one of the best in years for mass market retailers, many of the sales of electronic devices were heavily discounted, including the much talked about and hyped 3D TV.   The one exception that I have seen to this trend is in mobile wireless phones, but not because they have features and services that consumers are convinced they must have and for which they are willing to pay, such as mobile TV and mobile video conferencing . The customers that most electronics hardware and software vendors deal with are the mobile phone service providers who are the channels through which most of these smartphones will get into the hands of user. And these providers are adopting a market strategy that hides the true cost of such a device.   Originated in the mid 19 th century to sell those newfangled razors with replaceable blades, this strategy, variously called loss-leader or freebie marketing, is a business model familiar to the electronics industry. In it, one item is sold at a low price, or given away free, in order to increase sales of complementary items, usually in the form of supplies or services. Examples of this include ink cartridges for low cost inkjet printers, game cartridges for low cost game consoles, test strips for free glucose testers, even extra features on desktop and portable computers.   In the mobile phone market, particularly in the high end smartphone segment, consumers are not going to have to pay the true cost. Most of it will be absorbed by the mobile phone service providers who are willing to continue to pay for developing and deploying a variety of features on their devicessuch as mobile TV, conferencing, messaging, and internet browsinggambling that they will make back the costs of such development in what they can charge for online services.   Indeed, even now, they often give away such features and capabilities in the handsets they sell to their customers, whether the customers want them or not. When I bought my most recent cellphone, all I wanted was basic phone services. I wanted a low end phone with that and nothing more. But several of the service providers I talked to did not sell such devices, their lowest end devices including features I did not want such as GPS and built-in cameras, but at a price they said was no higher than the low end devices they used to sell without those features.   But such strategies will not work on the vast majority of consumer electronics products in the new, more frugal market environment where potential customers will be more concerned with paying off debts and setting aside savings than paying out a lot for the hottest new device. Generally, executives of companies still actively involved in the consumer electronics market, tell me they are placing great hopes in pickup in consumer spending in countries outside the U.S.   But the big questions are: How long will the new more frugal mindset last in the U.S.? And how long will it take for consumers in other countries to reverse their decade- long debt-averse habits, especially since the current crippling worldwide recession has proved the wisdom of their habits? Well, the 1920s was an era of optimism about the future, but the depression of the 1930s fundamentally changed the habits of those who went through it, and held sway well into the 1970s.   For however long it lasts, consumer electronics companies will ultimately have to depend on the ability of developers to create ever more powerful consumer products at lower cost just to maintain current growth rates. I have some ideas about where those opportunities are and will talk about them in later blogs. For now, I would like to hear from you.    

The demise of the Flip video camera reads like the opening of a great murder mysteryor at least a decent Law and Order episode. Someone (or in this case, something) has been killed, there are a few suspects, but very few clues. Or, more accurately, we know who done it: Cisco Systems Inc., the Silicon Valley networking gear giant that set its sights on the consumer video market and forked over $590 million to acquire Pure Digital Inc., the inventor of the Flip, in 2009. What we don't have, and what very few people appear to have even sound theories on, is motive. Clearly, Cisco wanted out of a consumer business that it never really understood and that offered pitiful margins compared with Cisco's big ticket networking gear. (As evidence, several analysts cite the flop of Cisco's Umi video conferencing devices, which carried a price tag$600 plus $25 per month for servicethat many felt was untenable.) But the company's decision to pull the plug on the Flip businessrather than sell it offhas many people scratching their heads. The Flip, which first hit the market under that name in 2007, is currently the No. 1 selling camcorder on Amazon.comthe black Flip UltraHD, that is. A total of four Flip models are among the top 10 selling camcorders on Amazon. According to the New York Times, a total of 7 million Flip camcorders have been sold to date and Cisco itself claimed that Flip represented 35 percent of the camcorder market. "At the end of the day, they were selling quite a few of these things," said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at market research firm Gartner Inc. But despite this impressive positioning, it's pretty clear that nobody would have paid Cisco anywhere near $590 million to acquire the Flip businessand here is where our chief suspect, smartphone convergence, comes in. The market for camcorders, especially small, mobile camcorders like the Flip, is on the wane. In fact, according to market research firm IHS iSuppli, overall camcorder shipments have been relatively stagnant since at least 2003the firm projects that in 2012 about 17.2 million camcorders will ship worldwide, compared to about 17.3 million in 2003. Analysts have long warned that gadgets that specialize in one thing would be threatened by the convergence of devices that can do several things. Smartphones are the biggest thug, growing enormously in popularity andin a competition for marketshare among each otherrapidly adding new functionality. The fact of the matter is that nearly everyone who packs a smartphone todayand even more so a year or two from nowis already lugging around a pocket-sized device that shoots video of comparable or better quality than the Flip. Even so, someone would have paid something for the Flip business, which would have included a market-leading product, a lauded brand and a creative team of designers who shocked the world once and, who knows, could do it again. What accountants have to say Sources said Cisco had signaled its desire to exit the consumer market and was advised to seek a buyer for the Flip business. It is not known if Cisco engaged in discussions with any other company about a possible sale. A spokesperson for Cisco did not immediately respond to a request for an interview. "Sometimes it comes down to what the accountants have to say," Gartenberg said. According to Gartenberg, it seems likely that Cisco calculated that it would be easier and ultimately less costly to simply shutter the unit and write it off, rather than going to the time and trouble of finding a buyer and selling Flip at a considerable loss. "Someone at Cisco ran the numbers and decided that this was the way to go," Gartenberg said. New York Times columnist David Pogue last week theorized that the most plausible reason Cisco choose to kill the Flip business rather than sell it is because Cisco wants to hold onto the Flip technology , presumably to apply to other areas. But it's not clear what about the Flip technology would be applicable to Cisco's other businesses, though the company said in its statement last week that video remains one of its five key company priorities. (Pogue also reported that Cisco was supposed to release a new Flip model last week, FlipLive, capable of live video broadcasting to the Internet). Jordan Selburn, a consumer electronics analyst at market research firm IHS iSuppli, said that despite Flip's position in the marketplace, the Flip unit may have simply been unprofitable. "Cisco may have simply decided that they don't have consumer DNA," Selburn said. "Part of the problem with Flip was once you bought one, you never had a reason to buy another one," Gartenberg said, adding that Cisco "lacked an understanding of the marketplace." "This is a sad thing for the whole industry," said Rick Doherty, co-founder and director at the Envisioneering Group. Doherty said the Flip design team made a serious impact on the consumer electronics world and predicted that its members would resurface and "spread their wings." "Camcorders are still a good business for many people," Doherty said. "There will be more innovation there, and great things will probably be coming. It's just a shame that Cisco took this route of not heeding industry trends and not, it seems, even respecting the company that they acquired." So it would seem that we can't make a case against convergence alone in the killing of the Flip. But clearly its fingerprints were among those found at the scene of the crime. According to Selburn, the "dedicated single-tasker"a gadget with only one applicationis under fire in all areas of consumer electronics, thanks in large part to the threat posed by multiple-application devices like the smartphone and media tablet. "That doesn't mean that they are all going away or doing badly," Sulburn said. Let's take a look at some of the other heretofore populareven belovedconsumer electronics devices that face threat from this menace at large. MP3 player/iPod Yep. Even the Babe Ruth of consumer electronics gadgets (they both changed forever their respective games) faces pressure from the convergence of applications in smartphones, most specifically by its dastardly younger brother, the iPhone. Apple reported selling 19.45 million iPods in the first quarter of this yearbrisk business to be sure, but the lowest first quarter total for the iPod since 2006. Okay, so the iPod isn't going to disappear in the next few years or, probably, in the next few decades. But there is a clear trend line. According to Gartner's Gartenburg, standalone, single-application devices such as music players can continue to command a significant marketalbeit a declining oneas long as over time they get less expensive and continue to evolve. "If business wasn't a good business, Apple would be out of it," Gartenburg said. "They are still very much in it, refreshing that product every year, even though they have other products like the iPhone that function as a music player." According to IHS, after peaking at more than 197 million units in 2007, the market for all digital music players is projected to decline from 180.1 million units in 2010 to 160.6 million units next year. "The market isn't going away," Selburn said. "But for a market that was pushing 200 million units a few years ago, we are looking at about a 40 percent decline between 2008 and 2016." Selburn says the biggest remaining advantage for single-taskers overall, and perhaps for the music player in particular, is that the apps-packed smartphones and media tablets also carry monthly data fees. For a 10- or 11-year-old kidor anyone for that matterwho just wants to listen to some music but doesn't care to check email, tweet or update his/her facebook status, the iPod and its like are still the way to go, Selburn pointed out. Digital music players "won't go away unless the data plan costs go away," Selburn said. "And that seems to be headed in the other direction." Interestingly, though sales of the iPod and other music players are in decline, there has been a shift in sales toward higher-end music players, rather than the low-end, according to Selburn.