WiFi-Enabled Gizmos (WEGs) - The Market Drivers
We’re pleased to introduce MarketIntellnow, a leading market research and strategic consulting firm that is currently doing a report/survey on WiFi-Enabled Gizmos (WEGs). Over the next month, the team from MarketIntellnow will provide insight into their study results. We encourage you to visit their site and if so motivated to purchase their report.Â
Editor, WirelessPictureFrame.com
WEG Foundational Pillars
There are five key drivers for WiFi-Enabled Gizmos (WEGs):
- Wi-Fi penetration, currently at about 30% of U.S. households per our polling, is growing rapidly. A few WEGs– Digital Photo Frames and Webcams– already are riding the Wi-Fi wave. But these are single-purpose devices. We see a rise in multi-function devices, because…
- … there are a number of powerhouse widget-platform players like FrameMedia and AmnestyWidgets. They’re already driving content to PCs and laptops ’round the world. And Slide is in the #1 spot with a gaudy 177 million monthly worldwide uniques. So not only is there now plenty of “conduit” (wireless internet) in 30 million U.S. households and growing, but there’s also an easy way to self-provision content containers and the actual content therein.
- As to content, personalization (witness iTunes) is all the rage; everyone wants their “Radio Me,” as we like to call it. It’s easy to download audio and video content for one’s unique tastes (however esoteric). WEGs are new ways to distribute one’s personal content-set without having to carry around one’s iPod:
Your Content Where You Want It When You Want It.
- Appliance Intimacy: You’ve seen this. It’s the guy at the airport gazing deeply into the screen on his laptop, watching a video. It used to be that listening to music/watching a show was a group endeavor– it would happen in the “Family Room.” Increasingly, we’re cocooning with our devices, listening or watching solo, inches away. What this means for WEGs is everyone will want their very own (one per bedroom?), in part because your WEG plays your own unique content. As personal as a toothbrush.
- The United States is the richest country in the world, and almost without regard (within the relative range) to what consumer electronics SKU is offered, it moves at the magical price point of … $200. And of course, there is substantial elasticity south of $200.Consider Digital Photo Frames– some 5 million will sell in the USA this year. All they do is play photos, and to date it’s mostly been one’s own photos, not third-party content. Digital Photo Frames have been more a story of trial than adoption (ask a friend if he still uses the one he bought), but they support this thesis. These gadgets found momentum at the $200 price point, and as they hurtled toward $100, market demand surged.The ol’ Digital Photo Frame (single-function WEG) will give way to multi-function devices like this, beginning in earnest later this year, for the holidays:The questions we answer with our WEG survey include the following:
- What WEG functionality and content is desired most, by demographic?
- How will users want to manage their WEGs, and what’s the right form factor?
- What are folks willing to pay?
- Where will they put their WEGs? How many per household?
- What are the objections to WEGs, and can they be overcome?
- Where will folks want to buy their WEGs? And from what class of vendors?
Our ANWO survey is ongoing now, and the results with our accompanying analysis will be available 9/4/2007, via our eStore.
Questions? We’re marketintellnow on all the IM services.
