Studying the history of consumer electronics is nothing short of fascinating. The landscape is filled
with countless stories of product successes and failures— fickle consumer adoptions, clever marketing
campaigns that outsmart the best technologies, better packaging winning over better technology,
and products that are simply ahead of their time.
This book was not written to trace the history of consumer electronics. Rather, it discusses the
current state of the art of digital consumer devices. However, it is almost certain that what is considered
leading edge today will eventually become another obsolete product in a landfill—a casualty of
continued technological advances and progress. But make no mistake, although technological
advances may render today’s products obsolete, they are the lifeblood of the digital consumer
revolution.
Pioneers and visionaries such as Boole, Nyquist, and Shannon well understood the benefits of
digital technologies decades before digital circuits could be manufactured in a practical and costeffective
manner. Only through advances in semiconductor technology can the benefits of digital
technology be realized. The role of semiconductor technology in driving digital technologies into
consumer’s hands is shown by looking at computer history.
The first computers were built of vacuum tubes and filled an entire room. They cost millions of
dollars, required thousands of watts to power, and had mean time between failures measured in
minutes. Today, that same level of computing power, using semiconductor technology, fits in the
palm of your hand. It takes the form of a hand-held calculator that can operate from available light
and, in many cases, is given away for free. Semiconductor advances enable products to be built that
are significantly more powerful than their predecessors and sell at a fraction of the price.
But semiconductor technology is only the basic fabric upon which the digital consumer product
is built. As you read this book, it’s important to realize that there are many elements that factor into
the success of a product. Building and delivering a successful consumer product requires the alignment
of dynamics such as infrastructure, media, content, “killer” applications, technologies,
government regulation/deregulation, quality, cost, consumer value, and great marketing.
Just as the availability of “killer” software applications was key to the growth of the personal
computer, the Internet is a main driver behind the success of many of today’s—and tomorrow’s—
digital consumer devices. The ability to exchange digital media (i.e., music, data, pictures, or video)
between information appliances and personal computers has become a key component of today’s
consumer revolution. The success of today’s digital consumer revolution is based on the infrastructure
that was created by yesterday’s consumer successes. This dynamic is sometimes referred to as
the “virtuous cycle”—the logical antithesis of the vicious cycle.