Scan Monthly No. 019September 2004 |
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Signals of Change
Component Wars
SoC069
The conventional approach to achieving product differentiation emphasizes the end of the value chain closest to the customer. Innovative design and valueadded services are just two examples of areas in which companies have differentiated their products from the competition. But some companies are successfully differentiating products at the component level as well. Increasing competition from China and other developing nations in producing basic electronic components has led to strategies on the part of incumbents involving embedded software and proprietary codecs and video drivers to provide a competitive edge in the component wars.
Advertising's New Complexities
SoC070
The transformation of broadcast TV to something less than the dominant mass medium it once was has become impossible to ignore. So advertisers are on the prowl through all kinds of strange terrain in search of new reach and effect for their messages. New horizons include video games, contextdependent and localized ads on cable, product placements in TV and films, and the Internet. Media mavens are even developing user-centric measures of media exposure capable of measuring a consumer's exposure to several different media at once. Reaching the same number of users today that a company reached ten years ago now requires more media channels, more talent, and lots more money.
Dietary Disarray
SoC071
Food industries face a daunting set of oft-conflicting forces in their attempts to satisfy the various interests active in their markets. Consumers want to have their cake and eat it too in the healthy-versus-tasty dilemma. But the downside of obeying one's tastebuds—including obesity, diabetes, and other diet-controllable diseases—is becoming too much of a societal problem to ignore anymore. One might hope that scientific research could point the way to healthier foods, but current research seems simply to reveal the inscrutability of the complex systems that constitute human nutritional processes.
Redefining Aging
SoC072
According to Joel M. Stager, a professor of kinesiology at Indiana University, "What we thought was aging was really just inactivity." Researchers continue to explore the beneficial effects of physical activity on health and the deleterious effects of inactivity. As the health benefits of exercise and attention to diet see proof and documentation, opportunities will emerge for devices, products, and services that help consumers set and achieve goals and that help parties such as insurers verify and reward behaviors that are profitable to the company.
Insights
| Contactless Cards: Pay, Secure, Identify | View summary |
| D04-2486 | Download this Insight |
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Contactless cards are gaining momentum in the marketplace, and they will clearly be a strong growth market in the next decade. Less certain is what applications will dominate. Though payment applications are perhaps the best-known uses of contactless cards, they will account for only part of the market and indeed may not prove to be the best-suited general-payment application, instead serving primarily closed systems like those that resemble ticketing systems. Security and identification (ID) applications are attracting the attention of many vendors and potential users. These applications rely on radiofrequency identification for antitheft systems in retail locations, access control to high-security sites, identification of workers at factories and airports, and national ID cards. Electronic passports will likely be the biggest market segment by 2008, given that the United States has mandated use of the passports as part of its antiterrorism effort. The passports, as well as other contactless ID cards, will carry biometric data along with standard identification information. By 2010, the market for contactless cards could reach 1 billion units. Author: Martin Schwirn. 10 pages. |
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| Personal-Health and Wellness Monitoring | View summary |
| D04-2487 | Download this Insight |
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Pressures to contain costs are motivating the health-care community to find ways to move patient-management functions to outpatient services. At the same time, consumers are increasingly interested in having greater control over their health care. Both objectives are within reach now that technical developments—including mobile (often wearable) monitoring devices—are enabling remote and in-home monitoring of people's health and fitness. Biosensors are finding their way into medical applications such as glucose monitoring, lipid-cholesterol testing, and therapeuticdrug monitoring, enabling patients with chronic diseases such as diabetes to cut back on office visits and allowing their physicians to monitor their progress from afar. In-home health monitoring is another growth area, allowing continuous collection of health information and immediate and personalized feedback on patients' health status. Though health monitoring is not yet a well-defined market, signs point to a promising future. Some 90 million people in the United States with chronic conditions are candidates for health-monitoring approaches, and annual sales of glucose monitors alone top $3.5 billion. To tap into this market, companies will need to develop clear business models that keep their end users at the center of the design process. Author: Andrew Broderick. 8 pages. |
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| The Ins and Outs of Offshoring | View summary |
| D04-2488 | Download this Insight |
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The past 18 months have seen a significant expansion in scale of offshoring—the outsourcing of technology-related jobs to overseas (and usually low-wage) locations. Today is too soon for companies to know for certain how well their long-term interests will be served by offshoring, but 18 months is enough time to see the dynamics of the offshoring phenomenon more clearly. Early reports on the offshoring of call centers were highly positive. But quality problems, rising costs, and political backlash have brought some call centers back onshore. The offshoring of information-technology jobs has been even more controversial. Here again, companies must contend with potential political backlash while also dealing with cultural misunderstandings, insufficient expertise in the destination locale, and rising labor costs offshore. Offshoring is by no means the panacea it once seemed to be, but it is here to stay in one form or another. Companies will require long-term strategic planning to determine how offshoring might best serve their needs. Author: Thomas M. McKenna. 6 pages. |
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| Toward Cognitive Radios | View summary |
| D04-2489 | Download this Insight |
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Radio technology is evolving from a hardware-driven form of communications to a software-driven one, opening the door to a range of new communications applications and laying the foundation for cognitive radios with the intelligence to adjust to contexts in real time. In the future, for example, emergency workers might use cognitive radios that can establish connections automatically at a disaster site, configure the transmission signal to overcome potential interference, and adjust power, frequency, and modulation to ensure reliable communications in difficult conditions. Use of cognitive-radio technology in next-generation cell phones is an area of particular interest, with potential to enable hybrid devices to learn from interactions with their users and act in their users' best interests. A variety of research organizations are pursuing software-definedradio (SDR) and cognitiveradio technology, but much work remains before the technologies can meet their potential. Researchers are aware of the need to protect SDRs from viruses and spyware and of the telecommunications industry's concern that SDRs could devalue the spectrum that telecom companies license. Nonetheless, demonstration of cognitive-radio techniques is likely within the next three to five years, and standards groups will pursue standardization within the next five to seven years. Author: Marcelo Hoffmann. 6 pages. |
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Calendar
Scan™ Briefings
The biannual Scan™ Briefings in which Scan staff present Scan analysis and findings in Menlo Park, California, will take place on:
- 21 October 2004 at 8:00 am
- 19 May 2005 at 8:00 am
Scan™ Abstract Meetings
Scan abstract meetings (in which SRIC-BI [now SBI] staff participate in a free-form discussion of current Scan abstracts) are open for client observation/participation on:
- 20 October 2004 at 1:30 pm
- 26 January 2005 at 9:00 am
- 23 March 2005 at 9:00 am
- 18 May 2005 at 1:30 pm
- 20 July 2005 at 9:00 am
- 21 September 2005 at 9:00 am.
Watch List
The Scan program's scanning and research processes identify areas on the periphery of your organizations's focus that constitute potential opportunities or threats. The areas that we decide bear watching go on Scan's watch list of defining forces that are transforming the business environment. Current watch-list topics include:
