One of the opinions is in favor of the concept of switching to differentiating gadgets by components, and not by external features.
If you want to know about new product trends, then follow the development of technologies for the production of components. Sometimes, more importance is attached to what's inside than to the outside. This can definitely be attributed to humans, and I believe that more and more this approach will be applied to technology. Many of the most impressive breakthroughs in our beloved gadgets are driven almost entirely by strategic, groundbreaking innovations in component technology: processors, semiconductors, displays, sensors, and more. More recently, there have been reports that Apple might fit the next iPhone curved display, and that HP has already unveiled the first working prototype of a completely new type of computing device called 'The Machine' .
In both cases, it is the manufacturing technology of the critical components that drives the breakthrough products. In the case of iPhone, this will happen thanks to flexible OLED – displays that produce LG Display and a separate division of Samsung Electronics. In the case of The Machine, HP's proprietary memory and optical interconnect processors are key drivers of computing performance, delivering up to 8,000 times that performance.
Industry watchers for a long time know a way to find out the vector of trends in technology products: you need to identify the most important components being developed, then study them and the development of the category. It is not always as easy as it sounds, of course, semiconductors and other components can become significantly complicated in a short time. Yet there is still no better way to learn about the future of technology and industry trends than by diving into the market itself. Fortunately, many of the major component manufacturers make the process easier for ordinary users by understanding the importance of marketing stories that explain their product's inherent value and key technologies.
From companies like SanDisk describing the performance and longevity of their SSDs in a PC, to Nvidia showing an example of how AI works with GPUs, everywhere we can see an increase in efforts to educate even the most loyal users, as well as investors and other interested observers of the benefits. critical key components.
Given the growing maturity and stabilization of many popular technology product categories, I believe we will see a growing emphasis on the internals of popular devices. Of course, at a certain stage we will see radical and beyond the current state of affairs changes in the form factor, for example, smartphones with folding screens will appear. But this will only happen if the necessary components are mass-produced. Of course, the details I describe are not new. Since the early nineties, over the years, the company Intel has been advertising campaign around the slogan 'Intel Inside', building on it a recognizable brand and increasing the appeal of its processors.
The idea was to create a so-called 'component brand' – an essential part of a smartphone that is not a stand-alone product. The message Intel to this day brings to the consumer the fact that the most important components of the device (even if he does not see them) can have a big impact on the quality of the final device, just as the ingredients in a dish can affect the final taste. Many manufacturers of semiconductors, processors, as well as companies licensing components and technologies (for example, Dolby for audio or ARM for low-power processors) began to release their variations on improving the perception of both their products and devices based on them. Processor manufacturers such as AMD and Qualcomm are also working to create stronger and more widely recognized brands associated with important but logical technological advantages.
Most users will never buy directly from these and other major component manufacturers. Be that as it may, as product cycles lengthen and the industry matures, changes in the basic form factor of devices will slow down, and users will increasingly decide to buy a device depending on the components available on board.
Original article by Bob O'Donnell
Continuing the topic of the problem with the differentiation of modern gadgets, the author of the material stressed that over time, the emphasis will shift to the characteristics of the installed components. In his opinion, this will happen as modern production technologies develop, which will provide the market with the best components and will become a kind of catalyst for the further evolutionary development of the introduced changes. The approach is quite universal and it is successfully used by many players, the same OnePlus in its reiteration of the OnePlus 3 model: the almost unremarkable appearance is supported by cool hardware and improved characteristics, which has a positive effect on public opinion.
Still, it seems to me that the author missed one point. Speaking about flexible displays and the evolution of form factors in connection with the transition to a new display standard, we can conclude that the appearance of the devices will change significantly. Thus, we see that it will not be possible to completely abandon the visual component, some innovations in component production technologies cannot be 'contained' inside the case. This is what happened with curved screens, and so will bending screens. Not to say that such innovations will be in demand everywhere, but they may well act as a trendsetter. Or is it a complete rejection of external differentiation in the pursuit of maximum performance and ideal optimization awaits us?