Is The 6-Month Product Cycle Upon Us?

Mark Goldstein writes "What is perhaps more interesting than the 4 new Konica Minolta cameras announced today is the rapid product cycle that seems to have been established by both Konica Minolta and other manufacturers." Rather than the yearly model updates that people have come to expect, the article notes that three members of this batch aren't even a year old, and one is only six months.

Comments

Six month death spiral

[solarmist]

Yeah, sure. The picture quality'll go up, but the overall quality go down, just like video games, or processors, or....

All show and no substance...

I mean that's what seems to be happening with these rapid production cycles; they concentrate so much on improving one aspect that the entire product suffers, or at least starts to suffer, from it.

And let's not forget our favorite one, Microsoft; Although I'm sure this is not the main reason M$ sucks... *Insert M$ bashing here* *and here*

*and here*

*and a little more here...*

Re:Six month death spiral

[kingLatency]

Actually, the picture quality won't go up. The current trend has been to increase the resolution of the low-end cameras while keeping too-small sensors in them. This reduces the image quality, but increases marketablitiy. Also, manufacturers increase their still cameras' video capabilities, things like 640x480 videos. It's completely pointless. Unfortunately, this doesn't lead to a better product. As prices for larger CCDs drop, then we might see some improvement.

Only for some.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why I hate cell phones.

I just want a phone, I don't want to pay for new features I don't need in a new phone in 6 months after my current phone falls apart because they made a piece of crap.

Upon us?

[Alizarin Erythrosin]

It has been for a while then. Unless nobody seem to notice that the video card market has been in a 6 month product cycle for a long time now.

Re:Upon us?

[Biogenesis]

Which is why I haven't bought one for about 5 years.

Personally I want my purchases to *last*, I don't care if a "better" product is available the fact remains that when I bought something it did what I expected and required it to do and a year later it should still do it, hopefully for much longer.

I really dislike the way the entire technology arena is going, I am only 19 and already I see far too much "progress" for comfort. I look at my dad who has been able to keep the same job for 19 years and I know that I simply won't be able to do that.

But in all this change, I think we should all remember Ecclesiastes 7:10:
Do not say, "Why were the old days better than these?" For it is not wise to ask such questions.

People longed for the past 5000odd years ago and they still do it today, humans all share an odd similarity.

I sorta strayed a bit there...Aw well.

Re:Upon us?

[nelsonal]

I think Ecclesiastes probably has a lot of good advice for modern folk, after all the guy writing it was desparate after gaining everything the world had to offer (wealth, women, wisdom, power) and none of them made him happy after a short honeymoon period. I'd guess that many Americans are getting to that point or will be there in a few years. I've always thought the saddest people in the world are like Paris Hilton. Unlike those of us who can dream that being wealthy, popular, or beautiful would make us happy; they know that they do not and have little left to look forward to.

It's the market, silly

[heironymouscoward]

Markets that are in periods of rapid change obviously have rapid product cycles. When the race to the bottom is finished, and the winners have divided up the market, the product cycle will slow down again.

There are still too many camera manufacturers and the costs are still too high. The market will slow down when the cost per camera has come down to around $20 and the functionality is more than the average consumer wants. There will always be a market for premium products but this is not what is driving the current cycle: it's the mass market.

Standard technology curve... aka Heironymous' Law.

Faster != better

[supercytro]

The problem is that shorter release cycles are not necessarily better for the consumers. For the average consumer, it's hard enough to choose a brand amongst the myriad models out there. Then the buyer can look forward to having their model devalued with a new upgrade.

The manufacturers, will also lose out as they end up haemmoraging their own profits by reducing the return on research investments as well as losing the opportunity to build up a brand like Apple did with their iPod.

Dogbert

[mfh]

Seems they finally figured out Dogbert's release system. In order to make more money, you need to make more products, and release them more frequently. Also it doesn't account for any crappiness in the product, just that more of any given line will produce more revenue to the company.

Bad for quality, great for the corporate stocks!

Down to the power of IT

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

This reminds me of something I read about digital cameras once. Apparently the product cycle for digital cameras is so rapid that one camera, by the time it was awarded camera of the year, was already out of production.

I suppose with PC assistence, designing and building just about anything has become easier. It used to take forever for ideas and techniques to spread. Nowadays if your stuck at anything, you can google for the answer. Applies more to software design, but at least it's easier for designers to find components now. Didn't it take only 6 months for the iPod designers complete the design from the outside in, using off the shelf parts. That would have been a lot harder if they didn't have the net and emails I'd wager.

Re:Good for business

[jj_johny]

There is a big downside of such rapid product changes. It takes a fair amount of time to stock the sales channel. This means that before you see the latest digital camera on the shelf at the local camera store, it has to go through a three or four hands. This means that a product that is going to be replaced in six months spends the first month or more not available to people. Also, when a new product is introduced all the existing products that are in stock go down in value. If you are running a retail store, you can easily get stuck with product that is obsolete but can't be sold for cost. This is what caused the big computer retails to have so much of a problem when they were reluctant to mark down old product. This was especially true in the height of video card wars.

2 big areas that suffer

[millahtime]

There are 2 big areas that suffer in this faster life cycle.

1) Reliability - products will be more prone to fail. But, I guess this just forces you to go out and get a new one. Kind of like how many cars are now "disposable". You have them for a couple years and dispose of them to get new ones.
2) Quality - They aren't the quality products they used to be. They sure don't build them like they used to.

Re:2 big areas that suffer

[Moofie]

Things are also a lot cheaper (in real dollars) than they used to be.

There were no good old days.

It's All About Creating Artificial Demand

[Anonymous Coward]

This is yet another method in a long string of concocted schemes to stimulate artificial demand. Do we need a new car every year? Of course not but if we tweak the headlight to point in a different direction we can pawn it off as something new and improved and play to the elementary school insecurities of the American consumer and the need to have to have the latest fashion trend so as to be ahead of the Jones'. Look at the durable goods industry, appliances used to have a generic shape and would last consumers decades, now they are purposely designed with color patterns and quickly dating exterior body kit panels so that they can be disposable products in a couple of years when they break down or become rapidly dating fashion faux pas displaced by the next color change and bodykit panels.

Re:So What?

[Azrael Newtype]

So, a six month turn around is equivalent to making sure devices are destroyed every six months via internal bomb/bios coding to shut down/*insert other paranoid ranting*? I don't know how they could force me to buy a new anything really. I, for one, still have a 5 year old cell phone, a 4 year old digital camera, and a 10 year old car, all of which have fast turn around rates. All of them work as well as I need, so how am I being forced to upgrade? It could be said that they aren't working properly, but really, cell phone companies are about the worst for pushing out new products for no reason and trying to make old products seem inferior.