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Cell Phones Becoming Profitless

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the imploding-markets dept.

saccade.com writes "EE Times has a fascinating article on how electronics companies are being sucked into a profitless spiral by the cell phone market. More and more of the small consumer gadgets are being folded into the phone: camera, music player, PDA, GPS, etc. So the market for non-phone gadgets is slowly going away as the phone picks up more functions. However, consumers don't buy most phones; they are given away (or sold very cheap) by the service providers as hooks to get people to sign up for mobile service. So the service providers are demanding (and getting) rock-bottom prices for fancy phones they can give away, and the micro chip companies are forced into brutal competition for a market that is shrinking into a single commodity gadget, the phone."

2 of 498 comments (clear)

  1. Re:No, I did not read the article... by ipfwadm · · Score: 5, Informative

    Unless, of course, someone like Canon start making those integrated cameras which come with the phones.

    It doesn't matter who makes it. There are physical limitations of optics at work here. Correcting for aberrations takes a lot of glass, and glass isn't particularly light. There are currently limitations in the sensors such that larger sensors give better quality than smaller sensors. This will probably always be true to some degree or another (large format film camera give better results than 35mm, but for most of the market, who cares?). Sure, phone cams could potentially someday be enough for a lot of people, but they will NEVER take over the camera market as a whole. Just imagine holding a phone w/ attached 5 pound telephoto lens up to your ear.

  2. Re:Good! by tdemark · · Score: 5, Informative

    After I posted, I did a quick search on google and found this:

    Driving distractions:

    Outside person, object or event: 29.4%
    Adjusting radio/cassette/CD: 11.4%.
    Other occupant: 10.9%.
    Moving object in vehicle: 4.3%
    Other device/object: 2.9%
    Adjusting vehicle controls: 2.8%
    Eating and/or drinking: 1.7%
    Using/dialing cell phone: 1.5%
    Smoking: 0.9 %
    Other distractions: 25.6%
    Unknown: 8.6%

    Source: University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center

    My memory was a little off about the items (and order on the list).