Medicine turned into healthcare, doctors became providers, small coffee cups became tall, exercise became fitness, recycling became a sustainability tactic. So it has come to pass that politically correct eventually becomes...correct. And everything else, therefore becomes incorrect, inappropriate, or even offensive.
PCs and MACs represent growth markets in 2010... With the excitement (translate that -- lots of press) about a wide variety of PC-less connection choices for TV, radio, and books, one might almost think the PC and its MAC brethren were dead. Not so fast, PC sales are expected to grow 10% this year and MAC growth expectations are as high as 26%.
How is a market entrant doing? I have spent much of the past year looking at websites of tech companies in the aging-tech or digital health-tech areas. As part of this look, I am always trying to figure out how these companies are doing. Talking to the company executives is interesting, but the website, to me is very revealing and sometimes contradicts verbal descriptions of momentum. To me, these are visible indicators of company health:
Wait, wait, don't tell us. If we are patient, media reports will enable us to fully catch up with attitudes about technology in 2006. No, despite many of them in this blog, that's not a typo. So virtual doctor's visits were recently discussed in a NY Times article that I posted - "Are Doctors Ready for Virtual Visits?
Rant on. The Times New Old Age take on this weekend's Silvers Summit at CES: "American tech companies, taking notice of the unmistakable demographic trends, have launched a surge." Is Silvers Summit a surge? Are 'major tech companies' actively and broadly engaged? What you're seeing (as described and in CES press releases) is some innovation from small start ups -- and in an unproven market area, it is probably best thought of as experimentation.
Don't get me wrong -- I love my BlackBerry. Really for no reason except that it fairly reliably buzzes wherever I am so that I can read e-mails, 80% of which are basically junk. Which makes me a true junkie, I guess. Otherwise, my PC is vastly preferable -- with its big screen, connected to the fiber that I am lucky enough to have connected to my house. My cheap cell phone is a (slightly) better phone and doesn't make me feel like I am talking on a calculator.
For those of you still staring at your computer screen in 2009, I just have one (!) more thing to say. Okay, well maybe 10 things. Here are my wishes for the tech market that has, but has not yet fully realized, the potential to better serve baby boomers and seniors in 2010.
There are multiple ways to view the technology market for aging in place -- in the 2009 Market Overview, relevance is described as matching stages of frailty, and products are categorized by role in successful aging.
It's the end of the year and time for that wrap-up of the indicators from 2009 that will drive trends for 2010 -- what it all means -- more analysis on another day.
1. Location-aware tech enables more info, greater safety. GPS became even more useful in 2009. Verizon replaced its Chaperone service with Family Locator, The Alzheimer's Association introduced its ComfortZone (powered by OmniLink), several other tracking technology vendors launched, and location-based mapping and direction technologies, 2009 was a good GPS-enabled year.
