Enduring relics

Some technology just refuses to die.  It may have been shipped off to the nursing home but it still manages to sneak out on the town once in a while.

Why is that?  What is it about certain gadgets that lets them live on well past their sell by date?  Technologies that we depended on last century should be well and truly buried by now but some of them just won't lie down.

I loved my Palm IIIxe

Take the Personal Digital Assistant (PDA).  The Palm Pilot and its ilk were highly desirable once upon a time.  However, with the advent of the smartphone, which is a PDA and a zillion other things besides, you would think that there was no market for the humble Palm.  Not so.

According to the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), 350,000 PDAs were sold in the United States last year.  I doubt that you personally helped the figure along but if you work for a company that sells product lines they may well have been a contributor.  PDAs have long been used for stock control in warehouses and shops and that need is still there.  Just because new technology is available it doesn't mean that companies have thrown out the systems they've used for years.  So, yes, the PDA may be dead as a consumer gadget but it still has a niche in industry, and for good reason.

My first SLR: Canon AE1 Program

Maybe there's also a niche for photo film cameras too.  Although the digital camera has very publicly killed the likes of the once mighty Kodak, film stock refuses to die.  You can still buy single use, disposable film cameras and camera buffs need film for those quirky cameras they still play around with.  You also have to appreciate that just because something is old doesn't mean that everyone will stop using it.  People who have grown up with film and have a camera that they know and love will still support the technology, even if becomes increasingly difficult to source the film stock and the processing services.

Simplicity personified: the Rega Planar 3 turntable

A similar situation exists with vinyl records. Compact discs should have killed vinyl off years ago and digital
music services over the net should have mopped up any stragglers but no, vinyl is more popular now than it has been since its heyday.  Why?  Because people like the sound they get from vinyl.  They like the big footprint of the 33 and the wonderful equipment that plays these plastic discs.  Even price seems no barrier to sales, with vinyl releases costing considerably more than digital downloads or CDs.

People have long sounded the death knell for these technologies but when the user base for that obsolete gadget still supports it, you cannot truly kill it off.

12 obsolete technologies that refuse to die (Yahoo)

A very big pile

The Samsung S4 is already a record breaker.  Less than 1 month after its high profile release it has already shifted 10 million units.  10 million.  Just think about that.  Can you picture 10 million anything?  I can't .  The number is way too big.

Just how big a pile is 10 million phones?

This kind of volume makes me dizzy on a number of levels.  First of all how do you set up a manufacturing operation to churn out that number of devices?  We're not talking about nuts and bolts here, stamped out on a machine.  These are high precision complex devices that need to be assembled, tested, boxed then shipped to all the corners of the earth where they may be sold.  There are some serious logistics involved here.

The designers have done their bit.  They've created a blueprint that can be turned into a plan for assembly into an incredibly clever muli-purpose computer that will fit into your pocket (assuming you've got a big pocket).

They've hit the ground running.  They've moved this large volume of hardware to the retailers and phone providers ready for the big launch then they've opened the front door and in came a tech-hungry public ready to devour this gorgeous thing.  Even with it's price tag above $1000, that was no barrier to this enormous sales figure being achieved in less than 30 days.

Technology assembly line

Just for a moment forget the actual phone technology and the machines that make this possible and just think of the human effort that has gone into a project like this.  Think of all the people in their white, corporate overalls working long hours on the assembly line. Consider all the satellite factories that produced the components that are turned into that shiny new smartphone.  Think of the drivers and pilots that ferried the product around the globe, the marketers that created the campaigns to launch this new tech beast.  Think about the retailers who threw open their shop doors to welcome in those customers in new of a tech fix,  And think about those 10 million individuals who decided that this month was the right time to invest a handsome sum of money in buying the most advanced consumer phone on the market (at least until the next one is launched).

Huge numbers, indeed.  Any closer to being able to appreciate the energy harnessed to make this happen?  No, me neither.

It's great to live in an age of technology but it's also rather humbling when you start thinking too hard about it.

S4 is the fastest selling Android ever (Stuff)

The future of the assembly line (IEEE Spectrum)

When phones go bad

How long to ubiquity?

How quickly can a product move from niche to ubiquity?

Well, I guess that depends just how much society craves that product and how quickly industry can ramp up to supplying the huge demand.

We're talking here about diffusion of innovation - why and how quickly a product gains widespread acceptance.

Telephone diffusion in the US

The telephone is clearly a technology that is highly diffused.  Everyone has a telephone (or did have before it became possible to get by without a fixed line) but it's not something that happened overnight.  Economic hard times interrupted diffusion of the telephone in the US - the depression years actually saw a decrease in the percentage of households that had a phone installed.  Take a look at the graphic (opposite) to see the path to general acceptance that the telephone followed.  It took many years to reach the 90% penetration of the market it held by 1960.

Foot to the floor for the smartphone

Fast forward to the present day and look at the roller coaster ride for the smartphone.  Actually, roller coaster seems like the wrong analogy.  It's more like a drag race because, as soon as it got going, it just accelerated without slowing for any corners.

How did the smartphone become a runaway success in such a short time?  How does this differ from the fortunes of its great-grandparent, the original telephone?

Well, for me there are a whole lot of differences here.

The smartphone is actually a very sophisticated convergence of several very desirable technologies.  Most of them had been available in some other form before they were packaged together in a smartphone.  First of all there are the mobile phone features - the ability to make calls. send/receive SMS messages, check voicemail, etc.  This is what we've been doing for years with our basic Nokia type cell phones.  Everybody needed one but there wasn't anything very exciting going on there.

Handheld GPS device

Then there's the GPS functionality.  People have Satnav devices in their cars because nobody likes getting lost and they're a lot easier than reading a road map or (if you male) asking for directions.   Some people even went out and bought dedicated GPS devices for geocaching or other fun orienteering type excursions.

In-car Satellite Navigation

Hmm, all very useful but not enough to push most people's buttons.  So what is there about a smartphone that makes it special?  Well, I've covered that topic in a previous post and I have to say I'm staggered by what functions are actually packed into a smartphone.  Games, full web browsing through wi-fi or 3G/4G, productivity tools, video camera, and so on.  All made possible through a lovely touch screen interface.  Watch those lovely graphics woosh by as you lovingly caress that screen.

It doesn't really matter whether you splash out on an Apple iPhone or a high end Samsung or whether you join the mainstream and choose from one of the many cheap but capable Android phones.  They all put much more power in your pocket than anything that's gone before.   The functionality you get per dollar is quite astounding.

Much of the population doesn't even use a fraction of the technology available in their smartphones.  No matter, it's there if and when you need it.

Smartphone manufacturers moved very quickly to assemble these feature-rich devices.  I don't know if I missed something but one minute phones were, err, phones, then next minute they were these highly specified pocket wonders.  Convergence of a group of technologies (all the clever web stuff, sophisticated games, high quality video, GPS enabled applications) all seemed to happen almost overnight.

That level and speed of convergence is unprecedented.  Talk about speeding up the maturity cycle.

Shiny smartphones

The smartphone very quickly became a desirable object.  Fortunately for us it is also very affordable (if you don't need an Apple or you don't demand the top of the line Android).  Apple, together with their Korean and Chinese Android competitors, have cranked up their production lines to supply the world with as many units as they can devour.  That's a key point for this rapid diffusion -availability.

Choice is also quite overwhelming.  Just look at the Samsung Galaxy range for example - a model for every taste and budget.

Maybe not a particularly in-depth analysis, I realise, but some pretty compelling reasons why the smartphone has won our hearts and wallets so quickly:

• It has an incredible amount of functionality
• It's intuitive so virtually anyone can operate one without too much frustration
• It's the logical successor to your aging cellphone
• It's affordable and there's a model to suit every taste and budget
• It's available at a shop near you
• It's fast becoming everyone's favourite way to get online

When you look at it that way, is it really that surprising that it's a runaway success story?

More on diffusion of technology theory here . . .
Everett Rogers on diffusion of innovation

and here . . .
Roger Clarke on diffusion of innovation

Smartphone convergence and diffusion

Smartphone ensemble

The smartphone. The moniker doesn't cover the half of it. Sure, it's a phone and it's very smart but what about all the many other things it can do?

The smartphone is a record breaker in many ways.  It's a shining example of rapid technology diffusion. The smartphone has gained widespread acceptance at a phenomenal rate, far outstripping that of original telephone or the television.

It's arguably the leader in the area of technology convergence.  My list is by no means exhaustive but I got to thinking about what my smartphone actually does.

Nokia 1280 cell phone

At the most basic level it's a mobile phone, usually capable of connecting to at least one mobile network in the local territory and via roaming agreements overseas.  But that's just a cellphone, not a smartphone.

Your modern smartphone runs Android, iOS, Windows Phone, or several other less well known operating systems (O/S).  The O/S gives the phone the opportunity to become a full blown computer and more besides.

Typically even a low end model gives you all this:

• It's able to make audio (voice) calls, send SMS (text and multimedia) messages
• It's GPS enabled, allowing it to replace a dedicated GPS navigation device.  GPS also provides smart capability for many phone apps, allowing the output to be best targeted for the user's current location.
• It sends and receives emails from multiple accounts
• It's an electronic calendar, appointment planner and diary
• It's a multi time-zone clock, alarm clock, countdown timer, alarm
• It can transmit and receive data via Bluetooth
• It connects to home, public and office wi-fi networks
• It's a fully functional web browser
• Through myriad custom applications your smartphone can access virtually any web resource using an interface tailored for a small display and touch screen input
• It's a digital still and video camera.
• It's an audio player
• It's a video player, capable of playing the shortest clips to full length movies, sometimes in high definition
• It's a games console.
• It's probably the only device you own that can provide all this functionality in one tidy package.

These modern wonders are now so ubiquitous that the novelty is gone and we simply accept that this stunning array of technology will happily fit in our pockets.  People aren't generally taught how to operate this device - the intuitive nature of (most) functions means that a savvy user soon works it out.

The speed of global acceptance (diffusion) is unprecedented, as is the short time that so many technologies have come together to create a new multi-function device (convergence).

Try to avoid blind acceptance and express a bit of wonder at this pint-sized workhorse of the modern age.