Consumer Electronics and Niche Markets

I'm becoming convinced that we have reached a state in the information revolution where it's not about the quantity of information that we consume, but the quality; it's not about more-more-more, but about meeting and not exceeding the needs of users/consumers who are overloaded with choices and info. Just enough is plenty. For instance, cell phones don't need to take pictures, keep my schedule, give me an enema, and maybe make phone calls if I'm close enough to a reception tower on a cloudless day.

I've thought that the same is true for digital cameras for quite some time. In fact I based my final senior design project on this concept of niche oriented product design at Tech two years ago. Odds are 90% of digital point and shoot camera users, do not need the 5th megapixel (or even know what they are getting with that 5th megapixel). They don't use the added resolution and they are only eventually frustrated when they fill up their hard drives to capacity and can't figure out why they can't e-mail the photos easily.

Kodak recently came to this realization and gained market share as a result according to this NY Times article.

Kodak also recently came out with a 4 megapixel (NOT 5!!!) camera called the CES Easyshare One Wireless Camera that uses wifi to download pictures to the internet and skip the USB download step...it's a sweet camera to boot



My money is with Kodak in the digital camera race as long as they continues to target pleasing end users by making a more convenient easy to use products and not assuming that the most features means the best camera. The gadgetry phase of the digital camera product life cycle has long since passed and Kodak seems to be embracing this realization and making money off it.