Consumer Expectations for Portable Electronic Products... and How to Meet Them

Over the course of the last slightly more than half-century electronic products have evolved from niceties to necessities. If pioneering social psychologist, Abraham Maslow was alive today it is highly possible that he would've included electronic devices in his hierarchy of human needs for survival, alongside food, clothing, safety, shelter and friendship. Certainly many of those who are, for all practical purposes, addicted to their Facebook accounts would likely agree on their importance for individual social comfort, if not their mental survival. In the current era in the developed world, we are surrounded by electronic devices which have evolved over time, first to augment and help regulate and now, arguably, to rule and control our lives.

With billions of “servants” to control, the electronics industry, together with the software industry, (which the electronics industry ultimately serves in turn), have relentlessly pursued materials methods and machines to build products that are affordable to the consuming masses.  However all that comes at a cost. To frame the importance of the pursuit of getting electronic devices into the hands of consumers, it is important to understand their purpose and to that end some explanation is needed.

It has been said that customer information is the oil of the Internet. The bits and bytes of our personal lives, which are scattered willingly by electronic device users and consumers throughout the Internet, are the food that feeds the machine, which those same users and consumers  gladly exchange for their  Internet “fix”. It appears that the consuming public has, by way of analogy, become the Eloi to the Internet product developers’ Morlock from HG Wells’ vision of a dystopian future foretold in his novel "The Time Machine". For those unfamiliar with the reference, the Eloi were a docile people who lived on the surface of a post apocalyptic earth and the Morlock lived in caves within. The Morlock fed, housed and clothed the Eloi and in exchange the Eloi became the food of the Morlock. The comparison might be a bit extreme but it is arguably worth some consideration as we increasing continue to exchange privacy for convenience.

That personal assessment and cautionary preamble aside, there are certain product features in electronic products, which must be supplied if one is to succeed in their efforts to deliver the never-ending flow of new electronic devices that we have come to expect to see at Comdex in Las Vegas every first week of January. Following are some of those features important to portable product consumers...

1) The product should be as small as practical (not necessarily as small as possible) - It is axiomatic that portable devices must be small to be truly portable. This is especially true in the emerging world of wearables. Choices made and materials and processes will significantly influence the ultimate size reduction possible.

2) The devices should be light weight - Arguably a byproduct of making the electronic device smaller, lighter weight is nevertheless important if the product is going to be a physical companion throughout the day. That said if the device has great utility and can combine the functions of several devices into one there may be some give on the part of the consumer relative to its weight.

3) The device should be energy efficient/conservative -Recharging of portable electronic products is a fact of life and it can also be quite frustrating when the battery is running low and the charging source is unavailable. As a result it is important to be attentive to matters related to power management when the device is not in use. Research into energy scavenging technologies is getting interesting and could yield important benefits in the future.

4) The device should be high-performing - Consumers have come to expect higher performance from every new generation of portable electronics that they purchase. While high performance may not be required for every application within a device, it can be extremely important to the user in certain areas such as video streaming and gaming.

5) The device should be attractive - Electronic devices are increasingly becoming fashion statements and physical attractiveness of the device is of growing importance to the user. Looking up the rollout of some recent next-generation products in the portable electronic realm a good portion of the marketing literature has been devoted to discussion of the colors available to the consumer.

6) The device should be low cost - “Cost is king” is a familiar adage used in the world of electronics manufacturing and production. If the price point the finished product does not meet expectations it will not find a market. There are exceptions to this commandment when the product is a means to the sale of the service such as is the case with mobile phones, which can be quite expensive. The service provider however absorbs much of the cost in order to sell their service over an extended time, so long as a user stays under contract.
And finally…

7) The device should be reliable - reliability has aptly been defined as the measure of a product's ability to perform a specific function or service in a specified use environment for a specified amount of time without unscheduled interruption. Everything fails of course, we all recognize that however if the product fails before we are ready for it to do so or fails at an inappropriate time our tolerance for failure can be greatly diminished.

From a manufacturer's perspective failure is not always nor necessarily a bad thing as it can result in another sale, provided the user is not turned off or angered by the premature failure of the product. One sage observer once stated that reliability is perhaps best measured not by the return of the product but by the return of the customer. A final thought on this topic, specifically targeted at those companies that seek to serve the needs of those in developing nations, reliability of their products will be much more important than they are in the developed world. Those people surviving on a few dollars a day cannot afford to replace products that fail prematurely and the morality of selling them products having low life expectations, it is questionable. Better product such as it is believed can be achieved by eliminating solder (which remains the source of most defects and failure in electronics) from the manufacturing process could prove of great benefit to the poor peoples in developing nations in the future. 

In closing, it should be stated that this list is hardly exhaustive but it does cover some of the key concerns a producer should address in the manufacture of their portable electronic products. The reader should be open to the consideration of other attributes which may also be of benefit to the consumer now or in the future.