Impact of New Technology Essay Sample free essay sample

Today. engineering possesses a important consequence in the design and selling procedure of consumer merchandises. particularly electronics. As new innovations discovered. electronic merchandises have besides grown in maps and forms. Recognized or non. these new innovations by and large led the manner to new tendencies and cravings within the society of consumers. The alteration from one technological tendency to another is a procedure affecting assorted technological every bit good as cultural factors. In this paper. I will seek to place some of them utilizing the latest tendency of portable sound participants. This paper will lucubrate the history of audio participants. how the ‘turn’ to portable sound participants occurred and what factors were involved within them. The first sound participants were immense valve-based devices. It was both big and heavy. Automatically the lone manner we can listen to music is by being restricted to our life suites. However. sometime in the 60’s. the transistor was discovered. Shortly after. people can listen to the wireless without being ‘tied down’ within their suites. The really fist portable sound participant was really the 8 path participant. It has considerable success. but received heavy critics every bit good because of its majority and incommodiousness. It could merely play 8 path tapes. therefore. most tapes must be separated into two or sometimes three parts ( ‘Portable Music Player’ . 2006 ) . The nest coevals of portable sound participant was the cassette participant. In July 1979. Sony released the first Walkman. the Sony TPS-LS2. It was a little device powered by a 4 AA battery which allow people to listen to cassettes through earphones. The public reaction was unbelievable. By 1982. the new tendency has set a record on compact cassettes gross revenues figure and the Walkman itself ( ‘Portable Music Player’ . 2006 ) . After the Walkman. the following coevals of tendency in portable sound participant was the Discman or the CD-player. Many believed that the death of Walkman was the work of Sony itself when the company introduced the D-50. a portable sound participant that can play music directly from a compact phonograph record. For rather some clip. the Cadmium participant was the dominant portable music participant. Afterwards. mini phonograph record participants. brassy memory participants and audio participants with an internal memory threatened to replace the Cadmium participants. nevertheless. the Cadmium participant survive because it now reads mp3 CD’s ( ‘Portable Music Player’ . 2006 ) . The last coevals of portable sound participants is the Digital Audio Player ( DAP ) . The first DAP was criticized for several issues. First. the MP3 files by and large do no hold better sound quality. Peoples besides found it troublesome in reassigning files. despite utilizing transportation plans. The issue was so solved as new versions of iTunes became simpler to cover with. Today. the DAP consist of three devices: ( ‘Portable Music Player’ . 2006 ) The alteration from one engineering of digital participant to another was non every bit simple as it seems. As mentioned in the debut. it involves assorted factors whether they are proficient or cultural in nature. In 2004. the market value of portable sound participants in United Kingdom entirely was valued at some ? 473. 6 million. This was a 15 % addition since 2000. It was besides forecasted that the market for all portable digital participants will make a 37 % compound one-year growing rate from 2002 to 2007. During that period. entire portable unit cargos are expected to mount from 6. 8 million units to 36 million units. Many indicated that the rise was due to the increasing popularity of digital music participants. Some of those factors act uponing the development of the tendency will be elaborated in the undermentioned bomber chapters ( Bell. 2003 ) . 3. 1 The function of Marketing Sellers frequently stated that what they do is following bing tendency. But in fact. we frequently see that it is the sellers that shaped the tendencies as they please. Today. tendency is really much influenced by what we see in Television. newspapers and hoardings. by what we hear from our friends and households. etc. Those are all the work of selling experts. Long have they discovered that tendency are ‘made’ and non ‘born’ . The debut of Walkman for illustration. requires intensive promotional activities from manufacturers. In order to advance the Walkman. Sony. needed a powerful ad visible radiation striking publicity run. Directors of the company have had hard times converting people of the value of the bran-new merchandise. In Japan. creative person. Television and film stars received free samples. This was considered a good thought because fans have a inclination of following behaviours of their graven images. Soon. the gross revenues records went sky high during the first hebdomad of its release in Japan ( Bartlett. 2001 ) . Sony applied different selling schemes for different markets. In the United States. ‘sore shoulder. no more’ was a portion of a widespread selling run of the Walkman. This is due to the old tendency of American youth transporting big boombox on their shoulders. The first hebdomad gross revenues figure in America was recorded 16 billion units ( Bartlett. 2001 ) . 3. 2 Technical and Price Competition Beside marketing facets. many considered that the tendency toward portable sound participants is besides influenced by the proficient considerations. Consumers prefer appliances with more maps and characteristics. The rise of the portable sound participants mentioned antecedently was besides the consequence of higher capacity storage. increased participant options. add-on of real-time encryption. As more companies enter the competitory market. audiophiles can please in a enormous choice of options. sizes. forms and colourss. Different companies offer different characteristics to heighten their competitory advantages. Some offers hard drives that shop the music internally. while other offers interchangeable storage media. It is the consumers who so choose characteristics harmonizing to their personal demands. Considerations like. size versus storage infinite. compact or full size earphones and which sounds the best are powerful factors that influence purchase behaviours ( Bell. 2003 ) . Another dominant factor is monetary value. Since the first designs of portable sound participants. companies have been aiming the young person market in their selling run. This is one ground why cheaper monetary values could significantly heighten gross revenues figure in portable sound participants. More cheap semiconducting material constituents allow manufacturers of portable sound participants to diminish the cost of the merchandises. Even the larger capacity of hard-disk based portables is now sing diminishing monetary values ( Bell. 2003 ) . Both the monetary value decreases and a larger assortment of HDD-based devices along with consumers’ involvement in utilizing the devices to hive away picture and even informations will lend significantly to the growing of the portable audio player’s market. From these factors. every bit good we can place which merchandise will be the following large tendency among consumers ( Bell. 2003 ) . 3. 3 Technological/Cultural Mass Adoption on Portable Audio Player 3. 3. 1 Technological Tendencies of Portable Audio Players Technological tendencies are one of the most powerful phenomena that influence the way of an economic system. The phenomena would impact societies from non merely economic position but besides from societal. legal. and other related positions. It is interesting to see there are many appliances that entertain and help us to execute several activities in much easier ways. In 80’s we experience the new epoch in basking music through the innovation of Walkman. a simple. visible radiation and hence portable appliance. Since so we witness that portability becomes issue in developing new merchandises. ensuing in appliances like Discman. Game Watch. Wristwatch. and Sony’s PlayStation Portable ( PSP ) with internet entree embedded on it. to call a few. Therefore. the technological tendencies of electronic appliances are portability. Harmonizing to talk portables ( 2006 ) . portability becomes keywords to win in this fast-moving concern. About. com in his article reveals that Nintendo sold more than 21 million DS units since its debut in November 2004. The state of affairs besides occurs at other portable media like pocket Personal computer that enable users to take a note. browse cyberspace. and listen to music as if they use desktop computing machines at place. 3. 3. 2 Cultural Tendencies of Portable Audio Players Sony’ Walkman. which was popular several decennaries ago. was one illustration of how portable appliances become sidesplitting characteristic for electronic media. However. the success of electronic media does non simply depend on the advanced engineering that a appliance airss but besides cultural consideration. Take for illustration is the narrative behind the innovation of Walkman. a hand-held musical device. a few decennaries ago. At that clip. in 1979. research section suggested that handheld music appliances are no manner to do net income for Sony since harmonizing to quantitative research they conduct the collected information from samples showed that there are no people are likely to bask music while walking or running. This state of affairs shows that over trusting on quantitative informations might ensue in misjudge and chance loss to bring forth a salable merchandise like Walkman. In instance of Sony. although the quantitative analysis shows Walkman is non salable. nevertheless. clever foresight and vision of Sony Founder and Chief Advisor. Masaru Ibuka and Sony Founder and Honorary Chairman Akio Morita have promoted the production of the Walkman and flooded the market with it. The determination was made since he saw that many African American people bring music participants anyplace and he believed that portability becomes killing characteristic of future electronic media. It turn out. as we know. that handheld devices like Walkman. Discman and many others are salable in the yesteryear. in present. and in the hereafter. 3. 3. 2 iPod Craze One thing digital engineering favours computing machine industry is that any concern that employs computing machine hardware could be considered as parts of computing machine industry. The issue of Napster’s expiration due to illegal action had unfastened new chance for legal music download industry although late we can still download military policeman. 3-based music through P2P ( peer-to-peer ) method of file sharing. Refering the issue. Apple Computer creates new scheme by developing new killing appliances when the company invents and massively produces iPod. a digital music participant that supports legal download for 99 cents per path ( Figure 1 ) . This scheme highlights the Apple’s purpose to govern out computer-related industry. Figure 1 iPod Nano Beginning: World Wide Web. ipoditude. com The obvious success of iPod has put Apple Computer as a serious rival to Sony and Microsoft. In order to stay in the computing machine industry. Apple get their loyal client by making merchandises that have great characteristics. such as executing good design. user-friendliness. smart selling. and cagey publicity. The characteristics include individualized web logs. iTunes. and many others ( Figure 2 ) . The debut of iPod is widely accepted by consumers as by June 2005. Fortune Magazine stated that Apple has sold non less than 15 million iPods. In September 2005. the 5th coevals iPods are able to play picture every bit good as music. Some called this new design a picture iPod ( iPod. 2005 ) . Figure 2 Features of iPod that better relationship with clients. Beginning: World Wide Web. apple. com 3. 3. 2. 1 iPod and Personalized Blos Blog is one illustration of how engineering helps a individual to portion thoughts in the Internet at no costs. It is precisely similar to compose on a column in a magazine or newspaper where people can besides portion thoughts on peculiar topics. By definition. the definition of a web log or Web Log is a â€Å"Web page that serves as a publically accessible personal diary for an individual† ( â€Å"Blog† ) . This web page is typically updated day-to-day and reflects the personality of the writer. A web log is slightly similar to a public diary maintaining that grows up to be an of import point in back uping a company’s online concern since it is more effectual than on-line advertisement or selling. For cases. Tom Wark. proprietor of a wine industry public dealingss house. Wark Communications. has a web log that display his remarks refering assorted issues on wine-related industry ( Richmond ) . He believe that web log supply his company a great benefit since the figure of traffic into his company’s web site becomes two crease. However. the usage of a web log will non straight lead to more money since people or readers do non pay for seeing a web log. However. the proprietor of a company who use a web log might utilize a selling scheme to do a web log going a tool for enticing consumers to purchase merchandises or services the proprietor has. Therefore. the proprietor has chance to make a monolithic clients database. Refering the potency of a web log. Apple besides equips their iPod with the capableness to blogging. IPoditude. com becomes the Web’s Prime Minister iPod web log that enables users to run down newsworthy in the universe of iPod and reaches a targeted audience. In add-on. iPoditude. com readers are those who hungry for updated intelligence. info sharing. and passion. Presently. iPoditude links many site such as Gizmodo. iPodlounge. Planet iPod ( featured provender ) and many others. Figure 3 Official Apple Website that enriched with iPod’s characteristics 3. 3. 2. 2 iPod and Challenge in Musical Industry The innovation of iPod earnestly challenge the traditional Cadmiums and VCDs since now client can download music both legal and illegal since the format of digital music is now available in many signifiers and do people easy to download them. In add-on. the being of iPod besides gives challenges to music industry since the individualized choice of vocals may set album in the weak place. This is because as music lovers. we prefer to choose some pieces of vocals from different vocalists and set them in the same booklet since we might non like all the vocals in one album from a peculiar vocalist. Therefore. the being of iPod becomes serious challenges for musical industry and helps consumers to bask music much better since consumers who express their thoughts in World Wide Web. wired. com feel they are ill of high album monetary values and limited handiness. Meanwhile. the iPod and its characteristic. iTunes. enable consumers to download peculiar vocals and portion it with their friends at no costs. Bibliography ‘Apple’s Strategy’ . 2004. Retrieved August 16. 2006 from hypertext transfer protocol: //www. it-analysis. com/article. php? articleid=12794 Bartlett. Michael. 2001. ‘CES: overplus of Portable Audio Player- Industry Trend or Event’ . Newsbytes News Network Bell. Ian. 2003. ‘The market for digital sound participants should stay robust over the following five old ages. driven largely by gross revenues of hard-disk drive-based portables and combination CD/MP3 players’ . Digital Trends [ on-line ] . Retrieved November 20. 2006 Available at hypertext transfer protocol: //news. digitaltrends. com/article235. hypertext markup language iPoditude. 2006. ‘Advertise with iPoditude. com’ . Retrieved November 27. 2006 from hypertext transfer protocol: //www. ipoditude. com/ads. php ‘Portable Music Player’ [ online ] . 2006. Retrieved November 20. 2006 available at hypertext transfer protocol: //www. kuleuven. be/iccp/iccp03/history. htm Richmond. Riva. ‘Blogs Keep Internet Customers Coming Back’ .Wall Street Journal