Design Sojourn | Strategic Industrial Design Blog

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Thanks for visiting and please keep in touch? ~ D.T.

The image speaks for itself. Thanks David.

Edit: Check out the full slide from David’s slide share.

Image by: Jane

Fellow designer blogger KK has uncovered a great representation on the value of ideas in relation to a success of a business. Derek Sivers, in his post for O’Reilly, conceptualises an idea vs. execution formula, which I have reproduced here. Sivers writes:

It’s so funny when I hear people being so protective of ideas. (People who want me to sign an NDA to tell me the simplest idea.)

To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.

Explanation:

AWFUL IDEA = -1
WEAK IDEA = 1
SO-SO IDEA = 5
GOOD IDEA = 10
GREAT IDEA = 15
BRILLIANT IDEA = 20

NO EXECUTION = $1
WEAK EXECUTION = $1000
SO-SO- EXECUTION = $10,000
GOOD EXECUTION = $100,000
GREAT EXECUTION = $1,000,000
BRILLIANT EXECUTION = $10,000,000

To make a business, you need to multiply the two.

The most brilliant idea, with no execution, is worth $20.
The most brilliant idea takes great execution to be worth $20,000,000.

That’s why I don’t want to hear people’s ideas.
I’m not interested until I see their execution.

I have always believed that this is the big difference between a designer and non-designer, or an artist and a non-artist. Perhaps even an amateur versus a professional, you see it all comes down to execution.

People always point out a piece of modern art to me and say “well even I could do this”. I would then politely point out, “no you can’t, you don’t have the means or the know how to do it”.

The same with products. “God why can’t everyone be like Apple?” and my answer is “well we can’t because we either don’t have the means or the know how to do it”. Most of the time it is really the lack of the “means” or the unwillingness to put in the “means”.

Being in the design business for quite a few years now, I am surprised how many people (designers and non-designers alike) are so afraid to share their ideas. The point here is that ideas are dime a dozen, and like T-shirts, most of the people in world have them. What you do with them is the key.

The rest is all talk and talk is cheap.

For designers don’t let yourself fall into this same trap as great ideas are the name of our game. Look at it this way, having lots of ideas are like planting saplings. It is the bouncing, sharing and interaction of these ideas that turn them into strong trees.

So what have you shared today?

Image collage from Modu

Recently we covered Bug Lab’s modular mobile phone, where it was essentially a CPU “brain” that you can attach modules that you would purchased as you require it. Modu’s modular mobile phones takes this same concept but looks at it from another point of view. They start with a fully functional “brain” unit, and you then buy sleeves or what Modu calls “Jackets” which you slide the modular phone brain into it.

These “Jackets” allow frequent changes when ever you need it, and no doubt will be styled and sold as fashion accessories. Therefore with a flick of your wrist, you can have increased and customised functionality based on your requirements. These “Mated” devices could be digital content players, digital cameras, gaming consoles, business machines, Teen chat boxes and even desktop radios probably with News or Blog RSS feeds.

Honestly I am undecided on which strategy and approach is better, though I am leaning towards Bug Lab’s approach. The Bug Lab’s product strategy is more on a Lego building block level which is more efficient but could be slightly more technical and difficult to use. On the other hand, Modu’s feels higher up the food chain and is more like a Hub that can jump in-between products. My guess is Modu would be easier to use, though the product cost would be significantly higher (eg. doubling up of displays on both the “Brain” and “Jacket”). Regardless it looks pretty promising, even though the Modu seems to be in the concept phase. I look forward to the product launch, which is expected to be in Q4 2008.

Alec Saunders has written a great article on Nokia’s mobile phone product strategy. While the article just touches on Industrial Design, he gives good examples on how product strategies, combined with a good understanding of the consumer, is used to drive innovative designs for Nokia.

Nokia’s Juha Kokonnen, product director for the “Explore devices” explains:

Nokia products are divided into five categories for five separate markets:

The Explore line is the technical leadership product line. These are the N-series phones which push the boundaries of what a phone is.

The Live and Classic lines are the broad appeal products. These can be inspirational in nature, supporting one particular feature very well, or style oriented.

The Achieve line is focused on the enterprise. These are the E-series phones and smart phones.

The Entry line is focused on low end phones and emerging markets.

What I found particularly interesting was how Nokia follows a strategy similar to that of Sony. Called the “Sunrise/Sunset” strategy, what happens here is new, perhaps premium, features are introduced in top end models. If proved successful and well received by the market, the technology is, what I like to call, “trickled” down to the more mainstream models. This often happens, when the technology becomes more mature and hence cheaper. Also by this time, the market would have caught up and competition would have increased, resulting in Nokia making such features standard in their products with wider appeal. This is also quite similar to what is happening in the Digital Camera or any technology product market.

Saunders does the work for us by listing examples of when these new technologies and features were introduced by Nokia, and when they became standard:

From a time line perspective, the features introduced have consistently debuted in one or two devices one year, and then migrated to the entire product line within 12 months. And what we can see is that the Nokia product line is being optimized around music, the internet, photos and video, and now navigation.

2005
- camera phones with 2 megapixels introduced.

2006
- 2 megapixels standard across N series product line
- 3.2 megapixel cameras, navigation, WiFi and music introduced

2007
- 3.2 megapixels, music, navigation and WiFi standard across N Series product line
- 5 megapixel cameras introduced, with 8M solid state storage

2008
- 3.2 megapixels, navigation and music migrate to 6200 series broad appeal phones

Saunders concludes with a fantastic observation of Nokia’s phone strategy in comparison to Blackberry or iPhone. He rightly concludes that Nokia’s competitors create phones designed for content consumption, while Nokia’s aim is to create phones that are for content consumption AND creation. Great observation! This has been floating in the back of my mind for awhile now and he has summed it up beautifully.

I encourage you to read his entire article fully, as he goes into great depth explaining how Nokia’s strategy has been realised in the current range of phones. A great read and justification of why Nokia is still the best mobile phone company today.

Motus Games, a subsidiary of Motus Corporation, has developed the Darwin Controller of which they tout is the future of Motion Based Entertainment, and the natural evolution of the Wii Controller. Using their R&D experience in developing motion sensing gear used in Golf and Medial applications, the Darwin Controller is apparently a lot more refined in the sensing of your motion thus giving you true 6 degrees of freedom. CEO Mahajan describes the technology:

The Darwin, which was designed to resemble a samurai sword, has its roots in specialized golfing hardware called iClub, also made by Motus. Mahajan says the iClub was designed to help serious golfers improve their swings by sensing and analyzing minute details of the motion. Mahajan hopes to continue this verisimilitude with the Darwin. Where players often operate the Wii Remote one-handed in sports games, Mahajan wants the Darwin to feel more realistic, allowing players of a golf game, for example, to put two hands on the remote and swing it like a real golf club. “The Wii is a great device,” he says. “But they’re going from very simple applications, and trying to become more complex and capture more complex motion. We’ve gone from this very complex [process of] capturing very precise motions of the human body to something that’s actually less complex.”

The Darwin uses gyroscopes and accelerometers that measures absolute location with respect to the earth’s magnetic north. This makes the Darwin a lot more independent to the location of screen, unlike the Wii controller which has, in addition to its motion sensors, to reference that infra-red horizontal strip located on the top or bottom of your screen.

Looking a lot more like a handle of a “light sabre” or sword, the Darwin probably feels a lot more comfortable to hold that the Wii’s squarish profile. Logically this makes holding your simulated tennis racquet or, in my case, the golf club a lot more natural. Best of all it can be used on non-Nintendo game systems including the PC. Unfortunately though the typology of the Darwin’s buttons looks very similar to that of the Wii remote. Both the “A” action button and the cross bar control look very familiar. I think in terms of the Industrial Design detailing there is a lot of opportunity to do something more interesting and perhaps more haptic. Perhaps they are using the Wii controller as a reference, but by doing this, this product might be perceived as an accessory instead of a superior replacement.

This is also an example of a great product that can be used as part of a “challenger” marketing strategy which is meant to beat the current leader, Nintendo, by making a superior product. By leveraging on the market leader’s success (i.e. Nintendo Wii), the “challenger” strategy aims not to do it all, but to focus instead on one or two weak elements and create a better product targeted to specialist players who need a “…realistic controller so that it helps, rather than harms, real-life game play…”

Success of this product has to do with how well it integrates with the new or existing software library, but if this remote can accurately measure a position in space, I think they have got it quite a good head start compared to say Sony’s PS3 Sixaxis controller. They are looking for it to be launched in Q3 2008 just in time for Christmas.

Via: Technology Review

Image: Courtesy of Seagate

Wired Magazine has done a case study on the Industrial Design creation of the Free Agent portable hard drive between Seagate and Frog Design. While I had high hopes in getting a closer look at Frog Design’s Industrial Design process, the article does not quite hit the mark.

The image gallery contains mainly great images of down stream development work in realization and engineering. It would have been nice to see more images of the “thinking” and brainstorming part of design, unfortunately we only have a few vague images of a process and some rendering eye candy. Looks to me like someone is trying to protect the really important part of the process, the idea generation. Luckily designers will pretty much get it at first go, but as meat and potatoes for some one looking to learn it might just fly “over the top of the head”.

At the end of the day though, if you are working in or dealing with the design and product development industry, it is still a worth while visit to see how something is created from nothing.

Via: BMID and Endless Innovation.

Early this year I wrote about the Top 5 consumer trends to watch for 2007 and how it relates to Industrial Design. Following tradition, here we go again for 2008, and this time it is a little earlier and hopefully will help all of us be a better prepared in our never ending push to identify, synthesize and create a product that could become the next big thing.

Once again I am tapping in and responding to the large body of research by Trendwatching.com who graciously shares it with the world in their annual report for 2008. The consumer trends that were identified are very wide ranging and have applications in many areas, but the astute designer will realise a lot of it can be applied in your design programs. In particular if you start your design programs with a scenario base strategy as most of what was discussed is about our culture and habits of tomorrow. Even if you don’t, its just great information to keep for your lateral thoughts.

Here are my thoughts and comments, from an industrial design or product design stand point:

1. Status Spheres

“Here’s something trend watchers, CMOs and other business professionals should be able to agree on: in the end, when dealing with (and selling to) people, everything always comes back to status. In a traditional consumer society, he or she who consumes the most, the best, the coolest, the most expensive, the scarcest or the most popular goods, will typically also gain the most status.”

Selling products as Status has always been big business, and with the polarization of the market place and manufacturers or consumers moving up market, this trend to status will continue to feed each other in a vicious cycle. However designers will need to realise that this does not work with all products as:

As we’ve pointed out many times before, one mistake both trend watchers and brands make all the time, is to assume or pretend that a certain ‘trend’ will affect or be embraced by ALL consumers. No. Remember, in life and in trends: beauty (or ugliness) is in the eye of the beholder.

I believe tt is all about experiences and what is important to your target market. I have always said your consumer may eat premium pasta, drink expensive wine, but drive a Toyota, or worst still buy a $20,000 Home Entertainment system just to watch his pirated DVDs. In-depth study and understanding of your target market’s motivations is the key to unlocking what they find important to their status.

In terms of a consumer group, the status seekers will not only include the Rich. The “Nouveau Rich” (the growing rich middle class in developing countries like China, Russia and Eastern Europe) together with the Baby Boomers and Female market will be important considerations as they now have the money for self-actualization.

Interestingly enough status does not only have to do with money. Trendwatching also identifies other Status Spheres that Industrial Designers can think about.

a) The Transient Sphere: people who strive and seek as many different experiences as possible. Travel, trying new products, I see such consumers fluttering around everything like butterflies.

b) The Online Sphere: People craving an online status or in other words how many Facebook friends or visitors they have to their blog. I expect the internet to continue to be the place for new product launches and limited edition (Internet only?) launches.

c) The Eco Sphere: The Green movement will continue to gain momentum, and making sure your products are green will be a given.

d) The Giving Sphere: Gaining status by giving back to society.

e) The Participative Sphere: Customer made and interaction with your best customers can be a key to great market research and designs. Just don’t let this hinder your innovation.

2. Premiumization

Basically, with more wealth burning holes in (saturated and experienced) consumers’ pockets than ever before, quick status fixes derived from premium products and premium experiences will continue in full force next year.

This is something we started to see in 2007, Leather laptops, scarce electronics (planned scarcity?), limited edition water bottles, limited run toys, First Class Suites etc. I think this will continue to be big in 2008. As they say every product and service will soon have a “premium version”.

How about 2008 being about the PREMIUMIZATION of everything and anything. In other words, no industry, no sector, no product will escape a premium version in the next 12 months.

From the design side, expect modular platforms with “pimped” materials or features, and perhaps an “elite” range product runs. Mass market manufacturers will be struggling to look for differentiation but still maintain their bottom line as their volume calculations are hit. Luxury product manufacturers will also struggle as they pull no stops in locating the best and most unique features for their status conscious customers and hopefully redefining what is luxury at the same time.

3. Snack Culture

SNACK CULTURE thus embodies the phenomenon of products, services and experiences becoming more temporary and transient; products that are being deconstructed in easier to digest, easier to afford bits, making it possible to collect even more experiences, as often as possible, in an even shorter time frame.

Trendwatching calls it the Transient Sphere on steroids, however to me I think it is more that just about accumulating experiences. Our hyper-consumers are so overloaded with information that there is so much they can mentally process at anyone time. From over styled products visually fighting each other to easy to use products, this Snack Culture will have a huge impact on Design. What “bite-size” products will essentially do is impact in your product’s use experience. Consumers will likely throw your product in to the bin if they can’t figure it out in the first 2mins. As a result try-before-you-buy will be big, and just like Toys, your product better demo well.

4. Online Oxygen

…control-craving consumers needing online access as much as they need oxygen.

I think the effect is pretty clear as I had written in my Amazon Kindle post, products will need some kind of on-line strategy to vastly grow its use experience. It could be about accessing online information like internet radios, or uses the internet as a means to sell the product like limited edition prints or T-shirts. What ever you pick, on line information of your product and using blogs to generate buzz will be the norm for 2008.

5. Eco-Iconic

Over the past few years, the ECO trend has moved from ECO-UGLY (ugly, over-priced, low performance alternatives to shiny ‘traditional sphere’ products and services) to ECO-CHIC (eco-friendly stuff that actually looks as nice and cool as the less responsible version) to ECO-ICONIC in 2008: “Eco-friendly goods and services sporting bold, iconic design and markers, that help their eco-conscious owners to visibly tout their eco-credentials to peers.”

As mention earlier, the Green movement will continuing to gain momentum, influence and thus power, will be something to watch in 2008. Eco design should be something manufacturers can seriously consider as strategic competitive advantage. Furthermore, as going green will be a given, designers should take the next step to be not only aware of the environmental impact of your designs, but to build systems and products that foster sustainable behaviours in consumers.

6. Brand Butlers
This is an interesting idea where brands engage customers by getting involved in their day to day lives. This builds brand loyalty and love that encourages the customer to spread the good news! Designers might like to see how advertisers will position their products together with their customers. I probably won’t say too much more as this is really more of a marketing, advertising or PR strategy.

7. MIY | Make It Yourself

It’s a mainstream trend now, one that keeps giving, with millions of consumers uploading their creative endeavors online, and tens of millions of others enjoying the fruits of their creativity. User-generated content, at least in the online world, has grown from a teenage hobby to an almost equal contender to established entities in news, media, entertainment and craft….the next frontier will be digitally designing products from scratch, then having them turned into real physical goods as well. In fact, expect MIY | MAKE IT YOURSELF (and then SIY | SELL IT YOURSELF) ventures to become increasingly sophisticated in the next 12 months:

Of all the trends we are discussing today, this perhaps has the greatest impact to Industrial Designers. While this trend speaks about the current online MIY trends, and soon to be available physical facilities for customers to make their own, the next step is pretty obvious. Basically if people are making their own products to a specification of what they want, then what is the role of Designers and Design? This is something that should force Industrial Designers to sit up and think about, as it has a huge impact on our future.

While I have touched on this topic in the past with “Fabbing: A primer for Guerilla Design Strategies” and “The future relationship of IP and Industrial Design“, I will soon be exploring this topic in greater depth here as part of my in-depth research paper on this issue. So do stay tuned!

8. Crowd Mining

CROWD MINING: when co-creating, co-funding, co-buying, co-designing, co-managing *anything* with ‘crowds’, the emphasis in 2008 will move from just getting the masses in, to mining those crowds for the rough and polished diamonds. How to do that? Shower them with love, respect and heaps of money, of course.

This is an interesting as it will impact how we do our Market Research for our design programs. Now with communities of people with common interests coming together, it will be interesting to see how companies or people managing such websites take advantage of the “power of the people”.

While it is tempting to create a product that a group of people may want, it may not be entirely correct or successful all the time. We still need to be prudent with our costings and due diligence.

———-

I hope you enjoyed that run down and I wish you a great year of product development success!

This year’s 2008 CES Keynote speech is Bill Gates’ twelfth and his last as a Microsoft Employee (he is still the Chairman though). He says:

“This will be my last keynote. As of July, I will no longer be a full-time Microsoft employee. Since I was 17 I’ve had a full-time Microsoft job.”

Not sure how well this bodes for the future of Microsoft, but his conceptualised this last day at Microsoft with this video that took me a while to find.

Bye Bill and thanks for the memories…and oh, if you were really interested in the content of his keynote speech as well as his technology predictions, check it out Engadget’s blow by blow by the minute coverage.

Via: Pocket Lint and Engadget.

The CEO!

Bruce Nussbaum, the person that I see playing an important role in bridging the gap between design/innovation and business, offers up his “Top Ten Innovation Mistakes”. While a good read in general, I find his first point is by far the most important and salient.

1) CEO sloth. There’s no pretty word for failure to focus on innovation by top management. Every major innovation index, including the new one coming out by Business Week in 08, shows significantly higher rates of return for companies that innovate. Yet CEO’s consistently mouth the word without providing the leadership and resources to make it happen. CEOs need to make the time to lead the innovation movement in their companies.

I find it is often on the desk of the CEO, or main decision maker, where a great innovative idea will either live or die. Often leaders of companies know what they need to do, but often fail in the follow through with a lack of support and in particular when allocating budgets.

Thus it is of vital importance that the designer/creative/agent of change works directly or very closely with this CEO or decision maker. In this case the designer needs to understand his/her role, and have the right skills to be an influencer in strategic Design decisions that need to be made by senior management.

CEOs need to realize this, and take steps to have such senior designers to be part of their senior management. They have to realize that, just like Accounting, Human Resource and Logistics, etc., Design (with a capital D) needs to be a function within an organization. More importantly, CEOs need to know that managing Design requires specific skills that should be hired should the organization not possess them.

At the end of the day making a decision is still the CEO’s responsibility, and deciding to go with a more conservative, proven, or me-too product instead of something a forward looking Designer recommends is not anyone’s fault but the CEO’s.

Image Source: Newsweek via engadget

The latest buzz on the Internet comes in the form of the Amazon Kindle e-book reader. I had first initially dismissed it as another e-book reader, but with time it has come to interestingly reminds me of the good old “Internet Appliance” product that was all the rage in the late 1990’s. Launched about 2 weeks ago, it was, according to Engadget, sold out in 5.5 hours! While there is no reports of how many Kindles were available, it does to me, sound of marketers creating artificial demand by keeping the number of units for sale low, ah lah Apple style. Oh well.

Despite that, I am interested to see if this USD$399 product, heralds the start of the new generation of “Internet Appliances” that also includes the likes of the Chumby, Roku Internet radio, and the recent Bug Labs open source product. Why? Unlike the Sony’s e-book reader this connects to the internet.

It’s only 360 Degree Industrial Design!

The Amazon Kindle looks wafer thin and seems to me designed to be a carry and go device. I’m not sure who did the Industrial Design, but the overall form seems very retro computer-ish with its angular surfaces and beige color scheme. (Beige?) Accordingly to Jeff Bezos, the Kindle was inspired by the characteristics of what makes a book, a book. Check out the impressive 360 degrees strategic industrial design planning in his interview below:

As well placed as Amazon was to jump into this scrum and maybe move things forward, it was not something the company took lightly. After all, this is the book we’re talking about. “If you’re going to do something like this, you have to be as good as the book in a lot of respects,” says Bezos. “But we also have to look for things that ordinary books can’t do.” Bounding to a whiteboard in the conference room, he ticks off a number of attributes that a book-reading device—yet another computer-powered gadget in an ever more crowded backpack full of them—must have. First, it must project an aura of bookishness; it should be less of a whizzy gizmo than an austere vessel of culture. Therefore the Kindle (named to evoke the crackling ignition of knowledge) has the dimensions of a paperback, with a tapering of its width that emulates the bulge toward a book’s binding. It weighs but 10.3 ounces, and unlike a laptop computer it does not run hot or make intrusive beeps. A reading device must be sharp and durable, Bezos says, and with the use of E Ink, a breakthrough technology of several years ago that mimes the clarity of a printed book, the Kindle’s six-inch screen posts readable pages. The battery has to last for a while, he adds, since there’s nothing sadder than a book you can’t read because of electile dysfunction. (The Kindle gets as many as 30 hours of reading on a charge, and recharges in two hours.) And, to soothe the anxieties of print-culture stalwarts, in sleep mode the Kindle displays retro images of ancient texts, early printing presses and beloved authors like Emily Dickinson and Jane Austen.

But then comes the features that your mom’s copy of “Gone With the Wind” can’t match. E-book devices like the Kindle allow you to change the font size: aging baby boomers will appreciate that every book can instantly be a large-type edition. The handheld device can also hold several shelves’ worth of books: 200 of them onboard, hundreds more on a memory card and a limitless amount in virtual library stacks maintained by Amazon. Also, the Kindle allows you to search within the book for a phrase or name.

Some of those features have been available on previous e-book devices, notably the Sony Reader. The Kindle’s real breakthrough springs from a feature that its predecessors never offered: wireless connectivity, via a system called Whispernet. (It’s based on the EVDO broadband service offered by cell-phone carriers, allowing it to work anywhere, not just Wi-Fi hotspots.) As a result, says Bezos, “This isn’t a device, it’s a service.” ~Source: Newsweek

Perhaps the designers, wanted to break away from the “Apple” effect, and I don’t blame them, but I’m not sure if the result is right for today’s consumer market and that the bookish tactile or haptic aspects does not seem to be well applied. Perhaps it is too literal in form and the graphic comprising of alphabets on the back does not really help. It is difficult to see in the pictures, but I would have liked to seem some heavy texture similar to that of paper bound hard back books. Regardless the detailing and large usable buttons are superb, that to me is the most important, especially in mobile product.

The Kindle also sports the new e-ink, low power consumption high contrast display, that allows for a 30 hour battery life (recharge in 2hrs), and can be viewed under any light source. The amazing thing is that, in the US, Amazon has purchased free Wireless access all around the country via the Sprint mobile network. It’s not Wi-Fi but according to Amazon it is “wireless similar to that of advance mobile phone network” that allows for connection anytime, anywhere. Hmm… I wonder if it is 3G?

Anyways, while that is all great and dandy, the problem is that it is a pay per use model to access the information. In particular access to free information such as blogs (USD$0.99/month) or the latest News, you now have to pay to get it on the Kindle via a system many people liken to the iTunes. While it does it sound to me another way for the high traffic blogs to make affiliate money, the reality is why pay for something when you can get it for free? While I understand the Amazon shop selling novels through the Kindle, charging for News and Blogs to me seems like a contradiction as most people do fine on the computer.

However, we should not discount the fact that it can link to blogs. As described in the Newsweek article, the fact that it is always on, means it has the flexibility for books to be updated, revised or even serialized. I think the greatness of this device is that it will change the way books are written, and I would not surprise if newer versions of it become some kind of blogging platform that allows authors to write their work on and interact with their readers directly.

But what about the identity of this product? Will it be confused as a PC or a PDA? The product seems to be a device targeted as an extension of Amazon’s on-line shop, therefore other than limited access to the Internet, the Kindle can’t do much more. Strange though, as wanting this device to do more does go against what an Internet Appliance is supposed to be, and that is a focused and dedicated device for doing something off the Internet. Many people are already poo-pooing the device in favor for their multi-functional Windows PDA and iPhone.

So then the next question is, are we really ready for dedicated devices? Or do we still want convergent products like the Nokia N-series phones and PDAs? Perhaps people have progressed with technology and are now advanced enough to handle the complexity that comes with multi-function devices? I’ll have to think on this more.

What’s next?

Going forward and looking at the bigger picture, there seems to be an interesting trend of what I like to call the New Age Internet Appliances. These devices will be low cost, but will make money by providing curated Internet content, which is either free (paid for via advertisers) or will charge in either a subscription or pay per use model. Furthermore these Appliances, are also fairly focused as opposed to the general web surfing Audrey of times past. (So we did have a product that can do more? But it does not seem to work as well eh?) It seems these days, selling products only does not cut it. The Product 2.0 era looks like will start with people selling content before they even start selling their product.

Not only that, it is interesting to see that the successful Internet companies who made their money virtually (for example Amazon + Kindle, or Google and the fake Gphone, or Skype and the Skype mobile phone) are coming back and offering tangible solutions as a means for direct access to services. I wont be surprised if there is a Flickr Camera product in the works. It is ironic that Jeff Bezos (CEO Amazon) commented, especially since he founded a business that is an on-line empire:

Books are the last bastion of analog…~Source: Newsweek

Perhaps this is the inspiration for him to create the Kindle? What ever it is consumer electronics of the future will never be the same and it seems to me the business model will need to start on-line virtually before it comes back to the real.