P3D Re: Define Today's Consumer

[John W Roberts <roberts@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

[Relevance to camera technology discussed at the end of the post]

>Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1999 05:33:41 -0700
>From: Brian Reynolds <reynolds@xxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: P3D Re: Define Today's Consumer

[Mark]
>> > I've been in the consumer electronics/camera market for way too
>> > long and I've predicted trends with 100%accuracy so far.

A consumer electronics question to help test Mark's predictive ability: what
will be the near-term (3-6 month) and long-term (1-2 years) impact on the
trend of growth of the DVD market from the recently announced "cracking" of
the DVD encryption code?

(Or does 100% prediction accuracy depend partly on being selective on
what issues to address? :-)  :-)
 
[George]
>> Well Mark, with all due respect, I bet if someone had asked you
>> for the future of personal computers 12 years ago you could not
>> have dreamed of what would follow.  How does that fit your
>> consumer outline above?  Personal computers are not simple and
>> you do not get results out of the box.

[Brian]
>12 years ago Radio Shack (the consumer electronics retailer with the
>most outlets in the US) had been selling computers to consumers for
>about 9 years.  Since that time computers have gotten cheaper (not
>just less expensive), lower in quality, and work right out of the box

How would you figure "cheaper and lower in quality"? They certainly weigh
a lot less than they used to, but to me they don't seem to break down
more than they used to, while performance and the complexity of the tasks
they perform (e.g. all sorts of user conveniences in the software) has gone 
way up. If your complex word processor crashes too often, just run "edit"
or "vi" under DOS (or similarly ancient software on other platforms),
and the reliability should be very good.

>(MS Windows preinstalled whether or not you want it).

Many consumers want an operating system preinstalled - even the TRS-80
had that. But there are probably at least five places within five miles
of here where I could get any configuration (PC platform) custom-built,
with operating system installed or not installed.

I think one thing that has not received adequate mention in this latest
film/digital/consumer electronics discussion is that the consumer market
is seldom homogeneous. Different consumers have different priorities, and
are willing to spend different amounts of money. This is important because
the business model for introducing new products depends on it. Occasionally
a new product comes out that almost everyone agrees is both superior and
cheaper than an existing product, and if it can be produced in quantity,
it may replace the old product in the market almost right away, but much
more commonly there's a transition period in which there are good arguments
in favor of both methods. When the transition settles down, either the
old and new products each get large shares of the market, or one product
becomes dominant and the other disappears or is reserved for niche 
applications. The "film vs digital" issue may be comparable to the
"horses vs cars" issue in the early part of this century. The first
cars were extremely expensive, low reliability, and offered few advantages
over horses (especially considering the state of the roads at the time).
But eventually the performance advantages of cars improved, prices dropped,
and better roads were made available. Nowadays in the US, horses are
reserved for specialized applications, and while some improvement in horses
continues (that's what horse breeders do for a living), the money investment
and rate of improvement of cars is much greater. Similarly for photography,
while film still offers advantages in many situations, and while there do
continue to be improvements in film technology, there's a massive push in
digital system development, and digital systems are biting big chunks out
of the film camera market.

Nowadays it's certainly possible to buy a horse, but you don't expect to
find horse stores in every town and small community. My guess would be
that in 10-20 years it should still be possible to buy newly-produced
film (probably with significantly better performance than the film that's
available now), but that you might have to get it by mail order, or from
professional photography stores. (I wouldn't be so bold as to suggest that
disposable cameras will have switched over to digital by that time, but
you never know. People used to laugh at the idea of disposable
smart cards. :-)

John R