| After 30 Years, Is It Time to Bid Farewell to CDs? Posted: 01 Oct 2012 12:35 PM PDT  Historians have a handful of dates to argue over and ultimately choose as to which represents the birth of the compact disc (CD), but for the sake of this article, we'll go with October 1, 1982. It was exactly 30 years ago today that Billy Joel's 52nd Street became the first commercially available CD, which not coincidentally launched at the same time as the first commercial CD player, Sony's CDP-101. Over the years, music players and PCs would benefit from the introduction of the CD into the mainstream market, but is it time to move on?
Many already have. Hardly anyone carries around portable CD players anymore, which have long been replaced by digital music/media players. Tablets and smartphones, which also serve as digital repositories for album collections, further distance the average user from physical media. If that's the case, why do they still exists? Like everything else, it comes down to money. In late 2011, Gartner predicted that consumer spending on physical music (CDs and LPs) would drop from $15 billion in 2010 to $10 billion in 2015. Despite the decline, that's still a log of money, and more than the $7.7 billion Gartner predicted online music would account for in the next three years. At some point, the two will switch places. "In the past 10 years, CD sales, the largest revenue stream for the industry, have eroded, while the online music revenue share is rapidly increasing," Gartner noted. "Digital downloads and streaming music services — referred to as subscription services — are the clear drivers in the online music industry for the coming years." 
Released on October 1, 1982, Sony's CDP-101 was the first commercial CD player.
On the PC side, broadband Internet connections and cloud distribution services like Steam are fast replacing optical disc drives (ODDs), a trend that hasn't gone unnoticed by ODD makers. Sony, for instance, recently decided to pull the plug on ODD production and will stop producing drives for PCs next month. Heck, most Ultrabooks don't even ship with an ODD. Are you still using CDs, either for music or to install applications on your PC? Let us know in the comments section below! Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Daily Deals 10/1/12: 23" HP LED Monitor, 64GB Waterproof Flash Drive, and More Posted: 01 Oct 2012 12:26 PM PDT |
| PC Makers Suck at Marketing and Selling Ultrabooks; IHS iSuppli Slashes Sales Forecast Posted: 01 Oct 2012 11:55 AM PDT  It doesn't matter how badly Intel wants its Ultrabook initiative to succeed if the chip maker's hardware partners aren't up to the task. According to IHS iSuppli, they've fallen way short up to this point, and as a result, the market research firm cut its near-term shipment forecasts from 22 million units globally to 10.3 million units. That's a 53 percent downward adjustment, and PC makers have only themselves to blame. How so?
Put simply, high prices and nebulous marketing are holding Ultrabooks back. "There once was a time when everyone knew the 'Dude you're getting a Dell' slogan. Nowadays no one can remember a tag line for a new PC product, including for any single Ultrabook," said Craig Stice, senior principal analyst for compute platforms at IHS. "So far, the PC industry has failed to create the kind of buzz and excitement among consumers that is required to propel Ultrabooks into the mainstream. This is especially a problem amid all the hype surrounding media tablets and smartphones. When combined with other factors, including prohibitively high pricing, this means that Ultrabook sales will not meet expectations in 2012." Not meeting expecations is one thing, but Ultrabook sales aren't even coming close to previous projections. The same will be true next year, as IHS iSuppli slashed its forecast for 2013 from 61 million Ultrabook shipments to 44 million. In order to turn things around, IHS iSuppli believes that PC makers have to get a larger number of Ultrabook systems down to around the $600 range. To be fair, prices have been falling in recent months, but there are a large number of models that still sell for around $1,000 and not nearly as many that sell in the $600 to $700 range. Low cost tablets aren't helping Ultrabook sales, either. 
"With the economy languishing, Ultrabook sellers may have trouble finding buyers at the current pricing, especially with fierce competition from new mobile computing gadgets such as the iPhone 5, Kindle Fire HD and forthcoming Microsoft Surface," Stice added. There's still hope for the form factor. As prices come down, new technologies like Intel's Haswell platform will bump up performance while also reducing power consumption and adding features like Intel Identity Protection Technology. For more on Ultrabooks, be sure to check out our four-way Ultrabook roundup. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Ikea Seeks to Enlighten Customers by Selling Only LED Lighting by 2016 Posted: 01 Oct 2012 11:28 AM PDT  A survey by Wakefield Research reveals that most American consumers are still in the dark about LEDs, so Ikea has made it the company's mission to enlighten them by selling lighting products that are LED-only. The bold initiative is being rolled out over time. Ikea's goal is to switch its full lighting range to 100 percent LEDs by 2016, which means the furniture store will sell only LED bulbs and LED lamps.
"LED is a light revolution. With household electricity bills continuing to rise rapidly and global energy consumption increasing, a small LED bulb can have a very big impact. It uses much less energy than a traditional bulb and brings a lot of home furnishing potential to the home. Building on our belief that everyone should be able to afford to live more sustainably at home, we will make sure our LED prices are the lowest on the market," says Steve Howard, Chief Sustainability Officer, Ikea Group. The advantage of LED lighting is that it lasts much longer than traditional fluorescent light bulbs and consumes far less energy, especially over the long run. Energy savings comes at the cost of higher up front pricing, though Ikea claims it will sell LED light bulbs at the lowest price on the market, making it a more affordable option for the average consumer. 
Getting back to the survey, Wakefield Research found that only 27 percent of Americans realize that LED bulbs can last 20 years, and only 34 percent understand that they use less energy. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Survey: Half of U.S. Adults Own a Smartphone or Tablet, Most Use It for News Posted: 01 Oct 2012 09:37 AM PDT  Want to know why hardware and software makers are putting so much emphasis into the mobile market? It's because the mobile market is a ginormous freight train that keeps picking up passengers along the way. According to a recent survey by Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) and The Economist Group, 22 percent of all adults living in the U.S. own a tablet, 44 percent own a smartphone, and half of them own either one.
These devices aren't just used for fun and games, either. News consumption remains an important part of what people are using their mobile devices for, which is putting it lightly. Based on the survey, nearly two-thirds of tablet and smartphone owners -- 64 percent and 62 percent, respectively -- use their mobile devices to check news at least weekly, tying statistically with other popular activities, like email and playing games. "Mobile users, moreover, are not just checking headlines on their devices, although nearly all use the devices for the latest new updates. Many also are reading longer news stories - 73 percent of adults who consume news on their tablet read in-depth articles at least sometimes, including 19 percent who do so daily. Fully 61 percent of smartphone news consumers at least sometimes read longer stories, 11 percent regularly," PEJ says. 
Mobile and online access is something major news corporations have struggled to fully take advantage of. Many have erected paywalls, which isn't always a popular option among readers who feel they should be able to get their news for free, or at least for less than what some subscription-based outlets charge. Billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch once said that "having a free newspaper website is a flawed business model" and predicted the end is nigh for such sites. He's also been very outspoken against news aggregators and once toyed with the idea of removing News Corp. content from search engines. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
