Posted on 10/19/2011 5:14:47 PM PDT by Jotmo
Which Tech Gadgets Will Be Phased Out This Decade?
Hindsight may always be 20-20, but you don’t need particularly great foresight to know many of the gadgets on today’s market won’t be around in 2020 given how quickly the tech industry keeps changing. In the first half of the 2000s, retailers were buzzing about the prospects of MP3 players and netbooks, but by the end of the decade, those products had largely been replaced by smartphones and tablets.
As tempting as it may be to imagine otherwise, some of the gadgets you may rely on most right now will likely suffer the same fate and be killed off or made obsolete by the end of this decade. Sure, you may still be able to find these products for sale in certain niche stores, but they will no longer be produced for a mass-market audience.
“You can still find and buy VCRs and there are people still using mainframes from 1992, so it’s not like this stuff disappears forever,” says Stephen Baker, an industry analyst at the NPD Group. Baker notes that the main reason retailers continue to market and sell outdated products is to cater to shoppers who buy them for nostalgia’s sake, but for all intents and purposes the market has left these products in the dust. So which popular products today will join the likes of VCRs, cassette players and transistor radios in the next few years? MainStreet asked five tech analysts to offer their thoughts on the gadgets that will largely be phased out by the end of this decade.
(Excerpt) Read more at shopping.yahoo.com ...
I don't know if I agree with the e-reader, but the rest seems pretty hard to argue with.
Comments?
I’m not going to the link Seth.
Desktop computers?
Voting machines might be out of use by then too
I still have my slide rule from high school.
He’s right and wrong on consoles, I doubt they are integrated into TV”s. However it’s clear that the standalone consoles is dead, I can see the future consoles being part of a dvr/digital set top/ content on demand box you get from your local cable company.
Our cell phones will probably replace desktops and even laptops.
All you need is a phone dock to connect a large monitor and everything that goes with personal computing.
I saw a demonstration video of a concept Iphone, where the Iphone could project a 10 inch holographic screen and it could also project a virtual keyboard to type on.
Those were working prototypess too. The only problem is getting how much power it uses down and getting the battery power up.
Thanks Jotmo. Let’s get some prognosticators in here. :’)
Standalone GPS Systems ... E-Readers ... Feature Phones ... Low-End Digital Cameras ... DVD Players ... Recordable CDs and DVDs ... Video Game Consoles
The problem with these lists is, there are shades of gray, so what used to be one thing is now something else, marketing notwithstanding.
The DVD player plays DVD, CD, and that’s about it; BluRay players will supplant the DVD player, but it’s not a sea change like the vanishing VCR in its many formats. And there are zero tape-based videocams now, because of flash memory.
Some more suggested for the list:
1. Tower CPUs have already disappeared, but the soon-to-follow companies still trying to make and sell them haven’t figured that out. We’ll see no more towers,probably within two years at the longest. The ITX boards designed for netbooks have been in use in home CPUs for some time already, but there’s been a sturdy resistance to making the CPU box much smaller, since a smaller box doesn’t look like it should be that expensive. I suspect that’s why Apple’s going out of business. ;’)
Furthermore, home computing needs will be more than met by the wave of tiny CPUs that will arrive in great numbers during the next few years. These devices have already been demo’d, and consist of a flash-drive-sized (or slightly larger) box with an HDMI port and a USB port, and maybe a RJ-45. They won’t even need extra juice, drawing power from either a powered USB hub or the HDMI port. A device like this with Bluetooth (see number seven) or other short-range wireless built in wouldn’t even need USB, and with the 802.11 wireless, wouldn’t even need the RJ-45. Flat screen TVs already have rudimentary www stuff built in (99 percent is for streaming media content), so it’s unlikely that separate boxes will even be needed soon.
2. Incandescent bulbs. They burn out too fast, cost more to operate, run too hot.
3. LED household bulbs — CF bulbs put out more light per watt, and cost a fraction of the LED bulbs. Last thing I need to spend $30 on is an underpowered LED “floodlight”, and I certainly wouldn’t install on outside for fear of theft. If the gubmint required oranges-to-oranges specs on all bulbs sold, there’d be no LED market at all. It’s unlikely that the price of LED bulbs will fall much more, give or take a breakthrought that makes them a one-for-one replacement for CFs, halogens, or incandescents.
4. Electric autos (reasons are obvious to anyone).
5. Fighter planes and bombers — UAVs will replace the former, guided missiles have long ago replaced the latter.
6. Tanks — tank-killer weapons have been manufactured by the jillions, and IEDs are even more commonplace. A $10 million tank can be destroyed for a couple of thousand dollars, at most. I should point out that I’ve been saying this for some time now.
7. Wireless standards currently in use will vanish and be merged into a joint, fast, all-purpose, and evolving standard.
8. USB 3.0 will replace SATA, eSATA, what’s left of PATA and IDE, what’s left of Firewire 400 and 800, and every other internal and external interface standard that uses wires. USB 4.0 will never come out.
9. The Democratic Party.
..since cable uses IP addies and offers phone service, I’m surprised we don’t have phone conversations over our TV’s..(picture phones)..smiles...
Flying cars won’t be around by 2020.
I have just put all of our home movies onto DVD discs. I hope there is some other way I could store them.
10. The Republican Party
K&E?....
Alot of it seems geared towards moving into a data-streaming model.
You won’t be able to listen to a song or watch any type of vid without shelling out. Probably each and every time.
Ferget it. Of I pay to buy a CD, it’s MINE!!!!
I’ll listen to it once or listen to it a thousand times, same thing with DVD movies and vid...
BTW, I still have about 50 LP’s, and the means to listen to them...
and do listen to them.
I think commas and semi-colons don’t stand a chance of surviving.
“Our cell phones will probably replace desktops and even laptops.”
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Partly so for kids born with mobile phones, but not for us older people. I hate even making a phone call on one, or any text that is more then one line long.
My fingers are no longer so steady, fast, or agile.
Screen size is also a killer for any user.
I do agree that desktop computers will be come relics.
I still have my old Dell, but have not used it in the last 4 years.
If the CD will disappear then that surely means the Eberhard Faber #2 word processor is on the way out too.
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