An article posted today in DVICE made 10 suggestions on improvements to digital frames. Many of these suggestions could be very useful such as Menu and UI improvements, battery power, and of course our favorite-”All Wireless, All the Time”!
Below is the list of the 10 suggested improvements made by author Paul Pachal. Read the full article here.
1. Frame Menus Should Work More Like MP3 Players
2. Big Screens
3. Full Mac Compatibility
4. Modular Frames
5. No One Cares About Music
6. No One Cares About Video
7. Battery Power
8. Controls on the Frame
9. All Wireless, All the Time
10. Color E Ink
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
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.
Google’s Christmas gift to large AdWords publishers and advertisers was a digital frame. So the question which begs an answer, did PhotoVu receive one?
On December 9th, 2006, PhotoVu’s Co-Owner Mark Van Buskirk told those gathered at the Boulder New Technology Meetup that his Boulder-based company spent $4000 per day on Google (see ad below).
Digital Frame
www.photovu.com 10.4″ LCD, FedEx 2-day Upgrade Valentine’s Day Special, $209!
At a cost-per-click of $1.50 (price estimate based on Google’s traffic estimator on Jan 31, 2007), more than 2500 prospective digital frame consumers would have visited their site each day from the Google advertising alone.
How are others faring with site traffic? We will try to answer that question each month by presenting the current Alexa Ratings for those companies focused only on the digital frame space. The Alexa traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users and is a combined measure of page views and users (reach). The lower the rating the more visited the site.
So here’s how they stood on 1/30/2007
| Company Name |
URL |
Alexa Rating |
Date of Alexa Rating |
| Ceiva |
http://www.ceiva.com/ |
27,988 |
1/30/2007 |
| PhotoVu |
http://www.photovu.com/ |
232,091 |
1/30/2007 |
| PF Digital |
http://www.estarling.com/ |
295,194 |
1/30/2007 |
| Digital Spectrum |
http://www.dsicentral.com/ |
506,243 |
1/24/2007 |
| Pandigital |
http://www.pandigital.net/ |
1,001,981 |
1/29/2007 |
| iMate |
http://www.momentolive.com/ |
1,520,942 |
1/30/2007 |
| Bigeframe |
http://www.bigeframe.com/ |
1,571,353 |
1/30/2007 |
| KoolVu |
http://www.koolvu.com/ |
2,141,163 |
1/30/2007 |
PhotoVu is an early leader in adding wireless capabilities and photo RSS to their digital frames and while the product isn’t perfect (see our review) we hope their leadership and investment in helping to create this new market will pay off. PhotoVu seems to be making a splash but with many new entrants in the wireless frame market in 2007 including Digital Spectrum, iMate, Ceiva and Kodak, it should be an interesting year. For now, it looks like the PhotoVu ad spend has worked well! Stay tuned.
One thing you never worry about with traditional picture frames is where to plug them in. But given digital frames’ need to draw power, that issue is raised by the transition from traditional to digital frames.
Right now, digital frames plug into wall power outlets using long, thin power cords or thick extension cords. Either way, this leads to ugly, twisted lines running down walls or snaking around desks and tables, waiting to trip passersby. Neither is a great option.
It seems unlikely that this is the kind of thing that consumers will overlook. Some will, certainly, but no one wants to mount digital frames on their walls if that means they also have to string cables down the wall where everyone can see them. After all, wireless Internet is more popular than houses full of exposed Ethernet cables ever were.
How consumers will react is only one important question surrounding this issue. The other is how will manufacturers deal with this?
It will be interesting to see if they take action, or if they expect house builders/owners and other contractors to do the work. After all, mounting digital frames on the wall would be unobtrusive if there was an electrical outlet placed at the right height. But outlets are not currently common that high up on walls. Perhaps clear cords will be one solution.
Another option is to power frames using batteries. Rechargeable batteries seem the best option, with perhaps two included with each frame (one to power the frame while the other recharges in a dock or plugged into the wall). This would eliminate the cosmetic issue, though it would likely increase the cost of the frame and batteries are hardly environmentally friendly when it comes to disposal.
Readers: How much new, exposed cabling are you willing to accept in your home? Would the presence of a power cord effect your buying decision? How would you like to see manufacturers solve this issue?
