Birnbach Communications' Top Predictions for 2013, Part VII

 Premature deathwatch of things that are very much alive, Part I 

·         One type of story reporters and bloggers like to write is the purported death of various, usually popular items, devices or technology. PowerPoint to email to texting and beyond have been proclaimed dead, even as those technologies continue to be used. We suspect these death wishes are a backlash to ubiquity combined with enormous frustration with the tech itself. The list of tech whose reported death is an exaggeration seems destined to grow larger with every year so here are candidates for 2013:

o    e-Readers: Just as ebooks are outselling hardcopy books, we expect a backlash affect saying that e-readers are dead because of the iPad and the iPad Mini. Yet we think e-readers will continue to sell because they weigh less and are easier to hold than tablets and because their screens are designed to be read in full sunlight (something you can’t do on an iPad).

o    Flash: Because of the popularity of Apple devices that are designed not to use Flash, some people have predicted Flash’s death. But there are still a lot of PCs out there that can use Flash. We say it’s not dead yet.

o    PCs: Last year, we said we expected that Post-PC would be a term we’d hear a lot – and we did – but though PC sales are declining, there’s still some life in PCs yet. There are still some things that you can do more easily and efficiently on a PC than a tablet so don’t write them off – just yet.  We think Ultrabooks and devices like Microsoft’s Surface Pro (part-PC/part-tablet) will continue to be in use through the end of the decade.

o    Cable TV: With all the articles about cord-cutting, you’d think all households were abandoning cable. That’s not the case, exactly. There are still programming like sports and local TV that you can’t easily get via Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, etc. And if you have to pay for all the streaming services to replicate cable, you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated when you cobble together different services and that you’ll wind up paying several hundred bucks a year. 

o    3D TVs and 3D glasses: Though it was the much hyped tech from last year’s CES, 3D TVs never took off. The reason: There’s just not enough 3D content available to make it worth purchasing 3D TVs.  A year later, there’s still not enough 3D content, and it doesn’t look like much is being developed, except for some 3D movies, which also aren’t meeting expectations. But if 3D movies didn’t die in the 1950s, when they were pioneered, we bet that 3D isn’t completely dead. Another reason people proclaim the death of 3D TVs is the launch of 4K and OLED TVs, which offer ultra high definition screens the size of entire walls. However, those UHD sets are also ultra expensive so we don’t expect to see them in everyone’s living room for some time. Please note: we do think 3D glasses for living room use is dead.

o    Blu-ray machines and DVDs: Typically the deaths of Blu-ray and DVDs are proclaimed for the same root cause: people prefer to stream video rather than own DVDs that can be scratched and destroyed and can only be played on certain devices (like Blu-ray players) that you can’t easily take with you everywhere.  But the fact is lots of people own lots of DVDs, and we don’t think people are going to be willing to throw their collections into the scrap heap of history just yet. Besides, DVDs offer featurettes that you can’t access from streaming video sites, which is often why people buy DVDs of their favorite movies. Also, for some households, the easiest way to access the streaming sites is through their Blu-ray players so don’t them out just yet. On the other hand, you don’t need Blu-ray quality when you’re streaming video.

o    Radio: Funny thing is that radio was supposed to have died years ago. In 1979, the Buggles hit the charts with their one hit, “Video Killed the Radio Star,” referencing a time in 1952 when radio was supposed to have died. Yet radio continues on, even in an era of iTunes.  That’s not true of cassette tapes, as evidenced that no new cars come equipped with tape players and that last year Sony actually stopped producing the Walkman, its pioneering portable music player. We’ll know radio is dead when car manufacturers stop including radios in new cars. But until that time, consider radio’s death to be premature. (Sorry, Buggles, whatever you’re doing now, certainly not, as they sang, playing their VCR.)

Let us know if you agree or disagree. Check back tomorrow for additional predictions or click here for Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V or Part VI.

2012 Trends Report Card, Part II

Here's Part II of our report card of how we did with our 2012 predictions.  

1.     Academic integrity will continue to be important to deal with cheating scandals. Academic integrity did not go away but was not the big story in 2012. The big story turned out to be MOOCs: massively open online courses, which according to the New York Times, are “usually free, credit-less and, well, massive.” (The fact that they are credit-less is perhaps the reason academic integrity and reporting on academic cheating was not a significant story this year.)  Examples of MOOCs include edX, a nonprofit startup from Harvard and the MIT, which has 370,000 students this fall in its first official courses; Coursera, which features courses from 33 Universities including Stanford, Brown, Princeton, Columbia and Duke; and Udacity, which offers online computer science courses. There was also continued coverage of Khan Academy.  We said to expect growth in terms of more people signing up for online courses – so we got that right – but we overstated academic integrity. Grade: B.

2.     The most overused phrase in 2012 could be: lean-back/lean-forward user experiences.  We also suggested other overused words could be pivot (in when a startup changes its focus and business model), ultrabooks (PCs as sleek and thin as Macbooks), and Post-PC.  Lean-back activities are those in which users passively access content, like watching TV while lean-forward activities are those in which the user is actively engaged in consuming content. Despite being validated by Entrepreneur Magazine “Lean In” in its “Jargon of the Month” in May 2012, variations on “lean in” or “lean back” were not overused in 2012. Probably “fiscal cliff” was the most overused phrase in 2012. The Wall St. Journal validated “pivot” with its article, "'Pivoting' Pays Off for Tech Entrepreneurs." We did better with Post-PC, getting validation from the New York Times (“As New iPad Debut Nears, Some See Decline of PCs”), Bloomberg BusinessWeek ("IPad: The PC Killer"), Fortune (“IPad vs. Surface: Let the tablet war begin”) and others.  For what it’s worth, the Wall St. Journal nominated another word as most overused word or phrase for 2012: Innovation. The article, "You Call That Innovation?" makes the case that "Companies Love to Say They Innovate, but the Term Has Begun to Lose Meaning." Back to our predictions, we overstated one but got other overused phrases right. Grade: B+.

 

We'll issue more grades in tomorrow's post.

In the meantime, let us know if you have any questions or comments.

NY Times' David Pogue Validates Our Ultrabook Predictions

One of our predictions this year was that "the most overused phrase in 2012 could be: lean-back/lean-forward user experiences."

So far, we've jumped the gun on that one. (As background, lean-back activities are those in which users passively access content, like watching TV. Lean-forward activities are those in which the user is actively engaged in consuming content, as when they’re searching for content on the Internet or via an app.)

But we also said, "Also expect to hear a lot of about ultrabooks – PCs as sleek and thin as Macbooks."

And in today's New York Times, consumer product reviewer David Pogue, reviewed several new ultrabooks. "So what's an ultrabook?" Pogue asks. "It's a MacBook Air that runs Windows," he answered.  He's bullish about ultrabooks: "If you wait, more goodness is coming."

Bloomberg BusinessWeek Validates Post-PC Prediction

For the second consecutive week, Bloomberg BusinessWeek validates one of our predictions for 2012. Last week's cover story validated our prediction of Chinese corporate espionage as an important story the media would cover in 2012.

This week's "Opening Remarks" column, entitled "Why the iPad's success may spell the end of the computer industry as we know it" (the online version is called, "IPad: The PC Killer") validates the Post-PC prediction, in which we said:

We expect that Post-PC will be a term we’ll hear a lot in 2012, given the exploding popularity of tablets, especially iPads. 

Bloomberg BusinessWeek joins the New York Times (see yesterday's post).

NY Times Validates Our Post-PC Prediction

As part of the coverage around the latest version of the iPad, there have a number of articles looking at the decline of the desktop.  One such article was in the New York Times, As New iPad Debut Nears, Some See Decline of PCs.

In our predictions this year, issued Jan. 31, 2012, we wrote:

Also expect to hear a lot of about ultrabooks – PCs as sleek and thin as Macbooks. We expect that Post-PC will be a term we’ll hear a lot in 2012, given the exploding popularity of tablets, especially iPads. 

 By the way, we don't expect to see laptops or desktops to disappear anytime soon. (Well, not laptops.) There's still a need for PCs and iMacs, for that matter.

But we do expect to hear, read and see Post-PC used more often this year and in the future.