The Future of Consumer Electronics

AntiFreeze writes "There is an interesting article from the Economist about the future of consumer electronics. The article seems to tie together a lot of loose strings generated on slashdot, specifically from the Playstation and Deep Blue article. The most important claim it makes is that consumer electronics are not being made in a monopolistic industy, and the fears of people like Eurodef (expressed here) are probably not as large as they seem at first evaluation." This is a really worthwhile article discussing convergence and the difference betweent he traditional consumer electronics and computing companies. Worth a read.

Comments

Re:Price dumping?

[homebru]

Microsoft expects to lose money on its XBox hardware

And as soon as someone hacks the box to run Linux, we should help MS sell a LOT of boxes.

hold on to your Yokohama's

[deran9ed]

After all, most American firms left the business in the 1970s not because they could not innovate but because their shareholders could not stomach the poor earnings.

I beg to differ on this note, I believe most American firms outsourced their business to foreign firms since it was much cheaper to go that route as opposed to American's spending so much and getting little in return as opposed to say that American companies turned "poor earnings". This can be seen with Zenith who for years made products in America, although not as good or as cheap as the Asian counterparts, nevertheless they still had a market.

Consumer-electronics devices are among the fastest to commoditise, as Asian firms quickly copy technology and drive prices down. The success of the Japanese can be partly explained by a capital structure that has allowed them to survive with little profit.

Not only are their structuring plans pretty well rounded, but if you take a look at academia abroad, you will notice the will of foreigners such as Japanese who try to go out and expand, look at America, we glorify glamour, and most of the students here aren't as willing to learn as foreign counterparts. (this is again my thoughts so flame on)

But here, too, digital may turn out to be different. As with the PC itself, most of the value turns out to be not in hardware but in software and related services.

Nonsense this is a very huge MS'ish based arguement, not all software demands revenue as show with the Open Source Movement. To think that computing relies on solely vendors such as Microsoft, MacIntosh, or Sun Microsystems is bogus.

Palm's strategy is eventually to make most of its money from licensing its technology, selling content and software to be used on its devices, and providing services such as wireless Internet access.

Sorry to remind so many people, but Palm is not a neccessity, furthermore for the company to rely on selling content, well take a look at Yahoo's slow fall last week. Along with that take note that wireless is too NOT a neccessity.

Anyways my rantings are over.

Britains Most Wanted

Re:new industries

[servasius_jr]

Playing devil's advocate here, I don't think the automotive analogy holds up entirely:

1.)Starting a car company is incredibly capital-intensive and will always be so, just because you're making a very large bulky object. D'you have any idea how much an industrial sheet-metal press costs for instance? Or prime real estate with good access to transportation networks like highways and railroads? Breaking into the electronics market is no where near as difficult -- most of your raw materials, i.e. individual parts made by sub-contractors, are small enough to ship by UPS. Hard still, but not nearly so difficult as trying to compete with GM from your basement.

2.)Cars and their antecedants, wagons, donkeys, whatever, fulfil a pretty basic need -- they attempt to get you and your shit from point A to point B as quickly and comfortably as technology allows -- as this need is fairly immutable, you don't see a lot of basic structural change, only improvements: you add a wagon to your donkey, then a couple thousand years later you replace the donkey with an engine, pretty soon you start making the wagon out of metal instead of wood, et cetera. Most consumer electronics don't fill any long standing need like this: it's either shit you don't really need, like networkable coffee machines; or shit you didn't know you needed until someone invented it, like the PC, GPSs, whatever. So unlike the automotive industry, the fundamental demand-side market forces are liable to change very quickly, and it's much easier to come out of left field with some new gadget which doesn't so much address a demand as create a demand.

Like empires, I think all monopolies are doomed from their very beginnings. The premise of each is that one guy gets to be god and everyone else grovels. The human will to power -- the fact that almost all of us would rather be in charge if we had the choice -- ensures they'll eventually break down. And fear of monopolies is a very American thing, just like distrusting the government.

"The Economist" pretty much rocks. I recommend it to all /.ers for good, if rather right-wing analysis of current events. All your Consumer Price Index forecasts are belong to us.

Nothing new under the sun

[imac.usr]

As it has penetrated a mass market, and as broadband connections to the home have spread, the PC has become an entertainment hub and the heart of the digital life, with the gadgets to match.

Yeah, I liked this idea the first time I heard it, about an hour into the presentation. Good to see it confirmed by the "respectable" press. :-]


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