Standards still haunting CE - Consumer electronics - Brief Article

The rash of new products coming out of the CE industry--as witnessed by the recently ended CES show in Las Vegas--comprised the usual display of cutting-edge, knock-your-socks-off, "how cool is that?" kind of stuff. From PDAs to digital storage solutions, it was truly a display of eye-candy that excites even the most amateur of tech-heads.

Yet the fact is, for all of the benefits these new products bring to the industry (and without debate, new product development is the lifeblood of any industry), they are now bringing the market dangerously close to the saturation point. And by doing so are moving it farther away from resolving the issues of compatibility, universal standards and product plagued by built-in obsolescence.

Take digital television. Nowhere does the issue of incompatibility and consumer confusion reign greater than here. It's a segment of the industry crippled by varying standards (SD, standard definition; ED, expanded definition; and HD, high-definition) all of which have confused consumers and driven down adoption rates, Of course, the irony is that the government has mandated that public television stations broadcast digitally by 2006, or as soon as 85% of homes in a station's market have a digital TV or set-top box (whichever comes later). With such a built-in obstacle to widespread acceptance-and the fact that opening price points of high-definition televisions are out of range for the average consumer--it's unlikely those pretty, flat-screen plasma TVs will serve as anything more than wall decorations in the near future.

One of the best-represented areas of the show was in Internet tablets, a concept ranging from wireless Web-surfing devices that feed off a central PC to self-sufficient desktop units with their own hard drive, modem and software package. The premise behind these devices is nothing short of brilliant: bag the bulk--drop the PC down to a small, lightweight and in some cases wireless touch screen that eliminates the need for the voluminous gray and tan PC boxes that were a mainstay of the '90s workplace.

But as welcome as these items are in today's market, not a single manufacturer seems to have come up with a formula that will be compelling enough to the end user to cause rapid adoption. Some are weighted down by limited Internet access (in some cases, very limited--only a dozen or so preset channels), some require contractual agreements with individual ISPs, and some even forego a hard drive altogether, which limits Internet use to e-mail and text--only communications--no attachments, no downloads.

Even Microsoft's X-Box, which was billed as the coolest item at the show--because it was--is not immune to the inherent problems facing today's consumer electronics products. Despite all of its alleged superlatives--smoothest, fastest and most versatile--the console won't be available until fall 2001, which could give its competitors plenty of time to catch up. In fact, in the world of computer hard drives, where exponential growth pushes processing speeds and storage capacity to new heights every quarter, what appears impressive today with X-Box's 733 MHz processor could conceivably pale in comparison to the technology that will emerge nine months from now.

With a glut of new items flooding the market, it's easy to get wrapped up in the awe of it all--especially when surrounded by technology the likes of satellite radios and 500-MB button-sized storage devices. But today's consumer, surrounded by names like Microsoft and Intel, has grown accustomed to standardized platforms. And the more these new products take us down the road of incompatibility and unparallel platforms, the harder the task will be of assuring fast consumer adoption.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Lebhar-Friedman, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group