Electronics

If there is one word that can be used to describe today’s electronics consumer, it is “spoilt”. Manufacturers are expected to offer new smartphones and tablet computers with new features on a regular basis, and bestsellers such as the Apple iPhone are expected to release upgrades every two years or so. As if that pressure is not enough, the phablet (a combination of a smartphone and a tablet that only came out in 2011) is now expected to surpass tablets and smartphones in sales in the coming years. While dealing with these new products and trends, manufacturers can still not afford to completely ignore desktops and laptops, despite those products’ stagnant-to-declining sales prospects.

In the television front, after years of debate on LCDs versus plasma, the former has clearly won the battle. In fact at the end of 2013, the world’s largest plasma tv maker Panasonic announced that it was ceasing production completely. In 2014, Samsung also announced that it would stop production by the end of the year, leaving LG Electronics as the main remaining producer (various reports indicate that LG is also expected to cease production soon).

However, LCDs (which are made with LEDs) are now starting to face competition from OLED tvs. Although the latter are much pricier, their costs are coming down rapidly and it is only a matter of time before they start replacing LED LCDs.

Besides computers, phones and tvs, numerous most other areas of the electronics market have seen tremendous change over the past several decades. For example, the traditional camera was largely replaced by the digital camera, which in turn is now largely being replaced by the smartphone. Storage media such as vinyls, cassette tapes, video tapes, floppy disks, CDs, DVDs have all come and gone or are currently seeing declining sales, as direct web based downloading and viewing comes to rule. This is possible due to there now being cheap and plentiful online storage options combined with widespread broadband connectivity and associated rapid streaming.