The Tech Industry Losing its Voice
Silicon Valley and the tech industry as a whole have a major disconnect from understanding how the average consumer uses their technology and what they want out of their products. Year after year, press conference after press conference, the world’s largest manufacturers of consumer electronics roll out new features and updates to their product line designed to fit into an idealistic utopian world where all technology works seamlessly in our everyday lives. Whether it is compromising useful features for aesthetics, or just adding new unnecessary features to help in their marketing, every major product launch in recent history has been met with the criticism “this sounds cool, but when would I really use it? Who is it for?”. This is a dangerous path for the technology industry to follow, and could lead to their position as the face of the world’s innovation to disappear.
Consumers are not going to suddenly stop using their smartphones or whatever smart device phones may evolve into, but consumer interest in new iterations is lower now than ever. There are no longer lines of people camping outside Apple stores leading up to the launch of new products. 2016 saw negative market growth of smartphones and tablets for the first time since the 2007 launch of iPhone (that’s how Apple Computer claims it should be written). The issue is tech companies are struggling to come up with new features to pack into their devices every year. The product cycle is slowing down and major updates now occur every two years instead of annually. Moore’s Law is seemingly coming to an end. To combat this, some companies turn to the aesthetics of their products to lure consumers, often compromising the user experience as a trade off. An obsession with making the thinnest and lightest devices possible has cut into battery life and led to the removal of useful features like expandable memory and even the headphone jack.
One of the most newsworthy products today are smartwatches, and for all the wrong reasons. Google’s latest operating system aimed at competing with Apple’s Watch has just launched and LG is the first to feature it on their new line of watches. Wired.com’s Davis Pierce began his review of these new wearables “I’ve worn almost every smartwatch worth the name, and I’m still waiting for that life-changing, never-going-back moment that leaves me incapable of imagining life without one”(Pierce). That’s not a very promising outlook on the product line. Compare that to the closing statements in The Verge’s Nilay Patel’s review of the iPhone 7 “If you need a new phone right now, sure, buy an iPhone 7.” “But unless you’re eager and ready to live the early adopter life, you won’t actually be missing out on much if you don’t get an iPhone 7” “It’s going to be the next iPhones that actually build a useful future on that foundation”(Patel). For people to be willing to spend hundreds of dollars on a product, it needs to provide some kind of life-improving feature. Instead, these companies see their devices as wearable interruptions aimed at drawing your attention as many times as possible throughout the day.
Another problematic characteristic of Silicon Valley companies is the refusal to acknowledge that their competing businesses exist. This ignorance effects the consumer through the products which never work together the way we have always been promised in science fiction movies and tv. We were promised that by now we would have a totally connected world where everything from our cars to our refrigerators would be on the same page and work together to achieve total automation of our tedious daily activities. Instead, if you want continuity across your devices you need to choose your company first and then only buy products within their ecosystem.
Right now, people view the technology industry as the most important and influential industry in the world, but that gap has stopped growing. No other industry is hot on their heels and ready to overtake them anytime in the foreseeable future, hold some major anti-tech culture change. However, when these companies talk, people don’t stop what they’re doing to listen like they once did. Product iterations have become more and more redundant and “technology fatigue” and boredom is becoming a real thing. Until a company can once again prove that their new product can improve consumers’ lives in a real, substantial way, the voice of the industry will continue its negative trend.
Consumers are not going to suddenly stop using their smartphones or whatever smart device phones may evolve into, but consumer interest in new iterations is lower now than ever. There are no longer lines of people camping outside Apple stores leading up to the launch of new products. 2016 saw negative market growth of smartphones and tablets for the first time since the 2007 launch of iPhone (that’s how Apple Computer claims it should be written). The issue is tech companies are struggling to come up with new features to pack into their devices every year. The product cycle is slowing down and major updates now occur every two years instead of annually. Moore’s Law is seemingly coming to an end. To combat this, some companies turn to the aesthetics of their products to lure consumers, often compromising the user experience as a trade off. An obsession with making the thinnest and lightest devices possible has cut into battery life and led to the removal of useful features like expandable memory and even the headphone jack.
One of the most newsworthy products today are smartwatches, and for all the wrong reasons. Google’s latest operating system aimed at competing with Apple’s Watch has just launched and LG is the first to feature it on their new line of watches. Wired.com’s Davis Pierce began his review of these new wearables “I’ve worn almost every smartwatch worth the name, and I’m still waiting for that life-changing, never-going-back moment that leaves me incapable of imagining life without one”(Pierce). That’s not a very promising outlook on the product line. Compare that to the closing statements in The Verge’s Nilay Patel’s review of the iPhone 7 “If you need a new phone right now, sure, buy an iPhone 7.” “But unless you’re eager and ready to live the early adopter life, you won’t actually be missing out on much if you don’t get an iPhone 7” “It’s going to be the next iPhones that actually build a useful future on that foundation”(Patel). For people to be willing to spend hundreds of dollars on a product, it needs to provide some kind of life-improving feature. Instead, these companies see their devices as wearable interruptions aimed at drawing your attention as many times as possible throughout the day.
Another problematic characteristic of Silicon Valley companies is the refusal to acknowledge that their competing businesses exist. This ignorance effects the consumer through the products which never work together the way we have always been promised in science fiction movies and tv. We were promised that by now we would have a totally connected world where everything from our cars to our refrigerators would be on the same page and work together to achieve total automation of our tedious daily activities. Instead, if you want continuity across your devices you need to choose your company first and then only buy products within their ecosystem.
Right now, people view the technology industry as the most important and influential industry in the world, but that gap has stopped growing. No other industry is hot on their heels and ready to overtake them anytime in the foreseeable future, hold some major anti-tech culture change. However, when these companies talk, people don’t stop what they’re doing to listen like they once did. Product iterations have become more and more redundant and “technology fatigue” and boredom is becoming a real thing. Until a company can once again prove that their new product can improve consumers’ lives in a real, substantial way, the voice of the industry will continue its negative trend.
Works Cited
Patel, Nilay. "IPhone 7 and 7 Plus Review: The Future in Disguise." TheVerge.com. N.p., 13
Sept. 2016. Web. 08 Feb. 2017.
Pierce, David. "Review: LG Watch Style and Sport." Wired. Conde Nast, n.d. Web. 08 Feb.
2017.
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