Software is smarter – maybe piecemeal hardware will be just a memory. What if devices were marketed just like paint color palettes? You know, those strips of colors that go well together, samples you can easily assemble as examples of how the trim will look with the walls and the color of the doors? What if you had the same experience buying a device in the store or online – and the items that went together were presented as selectable – beyond just memory and storage?
Smartphones – no buyers left? In February, the lack of 'innovation in the Samsung Galaxy S5' revealed to a Forbes writer that this points to saturation of the smartphone market. What is 'saturation'? Turns out it doesn’t mean that everyone has bought a smartphone, just that the era of double-digit growth rates may have ended. (Now we know that bank savings interest rates must be 'saturated.') Or not, a few months later, sales of the S5 are good and globally helping Samsung 'regain momentum'. Did they ever lose market share? Only IDC knows for sure.
There is a survey echo in here. Rant on. In listening to a presentation yesterday, I was struck by the similarity of the content between what older adults want from technology (now), what an older version of responders told the Linkage Technology Survey of 2011, versus Healthy@Home 2008 versus...pick a survey, any survey. Older adults aged 60 and beyond, including the 75+ age range that previous posts have designated as the Real Senior, want to stay in their own home. Okay. They are interested in some technologies that would be enablers. Okay. They perceive those technologies that they do not yet have as possibly too costly. Developers are concerned about building technology into new homes for fear of it becoming obsolete. In conclusion, older adults appear to be unaware of the technologies that could be enablers for remaining longer in their homes -- and they will not remodel specifically to get them.
Don’t quit your day job just yet – do the homework first. Starting a new company in the boomer/senior, mHealth/Digital Health tech space? I hear fairly regularly from those who have this intent. Maybe they have a prototype they have created. When I don’t hear first, sometimes I catch who they are through the modern-day miracle of Google Alerts. So maybe we chat, maybe I take a look at a website, learn how they are going about getting their funding, and I ask if they know about products that may be similar to what they are doing. Or have they browsed online catalogs, or spoken to non-profits (if that is one of the target audiences). Have they studied market sizings and surveys from Nielsen to Pew to the exuberant Semico Research? And so on. So here’s an updated set of advice for the pre-early stage:
