Consumers Snowed by Electronics Manufacturers
Posted in Money Matters, Technology, Education, wordpress, Microsoft, youtube, internet, ethics, United States, China, Video, HP, telecom, Music, Sony, WalMart, Nintendo, Entertainment, Business, Apple, Legislation, Japan, IBM on December 28th, 2008 by Stanford Matthews 
Another report of how enthralled (had to add this, enthralled = beguiled, filled with wonder and delight) consumers are with electronics offerings from manufacturers. This post is another attempt to raise some issues regarding consumer electronics. Some long standing criticism from this blog toward those who market electronics and control the infrastructure on which much of it is used range from how internet access is manipulated between what is available, offered and how it is priced to similar issues living in other telecom areas like wireless communication. Have you noticed how cell phones are marketed and its relationship to the primary function of telephones. That’s right. Voice communication between humans has long been the need filled by telephone service. Text messaging, chocolate phones, camera phones and all manner of other bells and whistles have relegated speaking to another on the phone as an afterthought. Could it be that spending the money necessary to offer reliable and quality voice communication does not present the profit margin desired by the providers? Could it be the public has once again allowed the market to be driven by the easily manipulated younger demographic with all that loose change to spend being ‘cool’? The manufacturers know it. Ignore the more demanding demographic for the one you can manipulate and who may have the most discretionary income with the most liberal criteria for purchasing decisions.
The ridiculous nature of the coming switch from analog to digital broadcasts is a critical tipping point in electronics related markets that should require no explanation for using adjectives like ‘ridiculous.’ The reasonable method for introducing new products and services by offering value in terms of quality, utility, pricing and other factors has been supplanted by collusion between entities within the public and private sectors in the electronics industry just like the examples found in the current ‘financial crisis’ stemming from the subprime mortgage scheme and lack of regulation and oversight from Wall Street to Main Street to the halls of government.
That is all the angst this blog author can withstand for the current post on this topic. It would be gratifying if the consuming public could muster enough discretion over their buying decisions as an aggregate to apply the needed pressure on suppliers to do the right thing. The vendors certainly won’t do it on their own. But then the same could be said about the public reaction to activity in government. And we all know to well how that usually works out.
Stanford Matthews
MoreWhat.com
2008 Consumer Electronica ‘Turns On’ the Public |
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New York City 18 December 2008 |
Retailers around the country are reporting a slower-than-usual holiday shopping season this year. But 2008 has been a terrific year for those who love consumer electronics - whether they are buying or just looking.
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| Despite the current economic downturn, large consumer electronics chains like Best Buy are doing brisk business this year |
During lunch hour at the Midtown Manhattan outpost of Best Buy, the largest consumer electronics chain in America, the checkout line is 30 people deep and counting. That’s no surprise to Nicholas Thompson, a senior personal technology editor at Wired magazine.
“It’s been a cool year,” says Thompson. “There has been lots of stuff introduced that’s faster, smaller, sleeker, cheaper, better than anything we’ve had before.”
Thompson adds that product design also has improved this year, partly as the result of Apple products.
“Apple makes beautiful things, and these things sell. So now everyone is making beautiful things!”
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| Wired Magazine editor Nicholas Thompson says that in 2008, the smart money for portable music players is on the Sansa Fuze |
One of the new products that Thompson believes deserve high marks for both design and affordability is the Sansa Fuze. It’s one of dozens of handheld digital music players on sale here.
“It’s about $80, which is much less than it would have cost a year ago, [and] you can watch TV shows. You can watch movies. You can listen to music, and you can look at photographs you can put on it, all your little media files.”
Thompson soon heads straight for the camera aisle, where he unhesitatingly picks up a stylish Sony T700. Unlike most digital cameras, which have smallish viewing screens, the entire back portion of the T700 is designed for viewing photos. He says people often put their photographs online, but relatively few people trouble themselves with viewing.
“But if you have a nice screen on your camera, it makes it a lot easier to share your photos with your friends,” he says.
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| The T700 digital camera has a screen almost as large as a traditional photograph |
Another important feature of the Sony T700 Thompson touts is its Smile Shutter technology, which is able to detect when a person the camera is aimed at smiles. It then shoots the photo without the user having to press a button.
Nearby, shoppers are snapping up a surprisingly small and simple looking video camera called the Flip Ultra.
“Video cameras used to cost $300 to $400,” recalls Thompson. “And for a lot of people, all you want to do is take a little video of your dog and stick it on YouTube. And why pay $300 for that?”
In contrast, at $129, the Ultra is relatively inexpensive. It also has what Thompson considers another virtue: almost no buttons.
“Buttons can sometimes be good, but they can also confuse you. This very simple, very nice present for someone.”
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| “Next in line, please” is a request this cheerful Best Buy cashier calls out hundreds of time a day |
Video games are bigger than ever in 2008. Thompson’s favorite this year is the FIFA 09 virtual football game based on the teams in the World Cup.
“For example, say you want to be the United States, or you want to be Brazil,” explains Thompson, “You actually have the simulation of all the soccer players who play on that national team. And if Brazil plays the United States, Brazil wins!”
When this Voice of America reporter asks him just why Brazil is sure to win, Thompson is quick to laughingly opine, “Brazil is better!” He adds that in the football-oriented video games of the past, the players would all look the same
“… and they would kind of run in the same direction, kick as hard, run as fast as each other. Now everybody is an individual,” he says.
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| Samsung high-end, flat-screen televisions offer images that can be almost too realistic for comfort |
Thompson says hard-core couch potatoes who want excitement from their electronic toys without exercise - even of the virtual kind - will love Samsung’s new top-of-the-line, large-screen flat televisions. The store’s demonstration model uses liquid crystal display technology enhanced with light-emitting diodes as backlights.
“The colors are truer. The blacks are a lot better, and it’s much easier to watch for a long time,” Thompson says. “You actually feel like you are in a movie theater even though are just sitting in your own living room.”
Soon, a chase scene from The Dark Knight, the franchise’s most recent Batman film, begins to play on the television monitor. But Thomson says that virtually zooming through the streets of Gotham City at 250 kilometers per hour in the Batmobile - while sitting in one’s own living room at the same time - is only one of the high-tech thrills in store for gadget lovers during the 2008 holiday season.
The youngest among us are the easiest to fool. Haven’t been on the planet long enough or care about the trends that matter. Gotta have the newest and coolest even if it is a marketing campaign that defines the object. The trend is the business community has long known how to use hype to drive revenue. They not only target the younger demographic due to the extreme discretionary income as compared to other groups but they are keenly aware that they are largely clueless when it comes to intelligent purchasing decisions supported by fact.
Why do cars cost so much? Why does health care cost so much? Why is the cost of an education higher than most think it should be? Although the details may vary the overall reasons for the cost of goods and services and their associated real value are so dramatically skewed. People convince themselves they need what they are buying and have no patience, discipline or any buyer sophistication adequate to the task. This is followed by subsequent complaints about how bad things are without the consumer accepting any guilt for the outcome. The ‘i’ in iPhone stands for idiot.
The Dems favor net neutrality and the GOP does not. This sounds a little more like traditional stands of party politics. If the internet, and more specifically the blogosphere, continues to exert influence on issues at the current rate, the face of politics may evolve as an entirely new animal. Or it may only reflect a shift in the tools of the trade.
Senate Democrats pressed the Republican-controlled Federal Communications Commission yesterday to slap tighter controls on media ownership, public-interest broadcasting and television violence.
LCD tv’s and of all things, content, plus the misplaced babble from Bill Gates underscore the top news from the Consumer Electronics Show. Substantially no better than the auto show, the electronics industry has made some notable blunders over the years. Without going back to the days of vacuum tubes, one such notable blunder involves the battle over VHS or Beta as the industry standard. The story attributes the VHS win to market forces and consumer preference over the superior quality of Beta. CD’s were touted as a media that was nearly indestructable upon entry to the market. There are just a couple of blunders. A top news item for this year is content. With a long and sordid history from the likes of the cable television industry, content is purely marketing strategy and hype, aka, BS. Cable television’s notable atttribute of 57 channels and nothing on was inspired by their habit of spawning a new channel based on greed every time content had a success. For a long time all you get at best is 6 hours of content repeated four times a day. And most of that is reruns. Not to mention the original appeal of cable was to pay upfront to eliminate annoying advertisements. Ya, that lasted a long time didn’t it?
Dole out new technology after you have bled the consumer dry with dribbling out tiny increments in advancements so the greedy corporate fiends can gouge the consumer for every buck they are dumb enough to contribute. Send all the jobs overseas or import cheap labor, keep voting for party politics and allow multi-million dollar golden parachutes for any clown smart enough to get a sleazy board of directors to go along with it. Force unnecessary digital TV on an unsuspecting public and have an annual electronics show to promote the continuation of this nonsense.
