Business

Monday October 26, 2009

Do we need fancy consumer electronics gadgets?

Monday Starters - By Soo Ewe Jin


MCKINSEY has just released a report confirming what we have always known but were too afraid to say, for fear of being labelled dinosaurs.

According to the report, most people don’t really use advanced – and expensive – new features packaged with the consumer electronics products they buy.

Although these companies have for years competed primarily through technology, by cramming ever more features into products in a race to offer consumers the latest and greatest, this trend is about to be reversed.

McKinsey says an attractive market is emerging for easy-to-use consumer electronics products, with features that reflect user demand, priced 30% to 50% lower than standard offerings.

Let’s be honest. How many of you who invested in an LCD or Plasma TV together with a Blu-Ray DVD player really know what all the buttons in the remote control represent?

Most of us who buy a computer just want to write, surf the Internet and play Solitaire. Yet we cannot resist buying the latest, the fastest and the most expensive PC even if we do not use 90% of what it promises.

And how about that iPhone or BlackBerry Storm of yours?

A car is only useful if it can get us from point A to point B, which is why I still get a kick out of seeing someone in a posh car with an equally expensive number plate fuming in a jam.

Nowadays, the accessory items in a new car could include a DVD player and GPS. My wife gives better directions and she certainly will not let me watch a movie while driving.

But I suspect that many of the extras we get in our daily gadgets and gizmos did not come about simply because people in the research and development department have nothing better to do.

I am quite sure they do a lot of research and get feedback from the users.

I saw an advertisement for a new range of mobile phones in this newspaper last week.

A number of models included a “fake call” capability. True to my prehistoric disposition, I asked my colleagues: “What in the world is that?”

We had a lively discussion and one of them volunteered that it must be something that allows one to get out of a meeting or flee from the company of some obnoxious character.

“You can just press a number on the phone and it will ring, giving you the perfect excuse to escape,” she said.

That sounded plausible but being good journalists, we decided to call up the company to check.

Yes indeed, a “fake call” allows the user to programme a code into the handphone so that if she needs to generate a call to escape, she just has to press a key on the phone.

Well, if they can make a phone into a camera and a device for surfing the Net and watching TV, including such a capability must be a piece of cake.

I know what I will say to anyone who tries and get out of a meeting when his phone rings the next time: “Excuse me, is that a fake call?”

·Deputy executive editor Soo Ewe Jin wonders how we are going to teach our children honesty when technology can be easily used to teach us to lie.

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