Studying teenage behavior reveals a lot about the future. While teens tend to be replicants of their parents, it’s their unconventional, non-biased nature that makes teenagers so appealing to marketers. So, are they truly the multitasking, non-brand-loyal, technology-savvy neo-conservatives as everyone paints them to be?
We know that kids are growing up faster. Mattel coined the term “KAGOY” – Kids Are Growing Older Younger” – to describe this phenomenon. That’s why so many news reports focus on the early ages at which teens begin to use cosmetics or dress “inappropriately.”
The latest teen malapropism? Taking naked pictures of themselves on their cellphones and sending them to boyfriends and girlfriends. Last year, 18 students at a Castle Rock, Colo. middle school sent around nude photos of themselves. Other cases have been reported in New Jersey, New York, Alabama, Utah, Pennsylvania, Texas and Connecticut, notes USA Today. Here are a few more contemporary, young-adult phenomena:
- DWT – A Liberty Mutual study of more than 900 teens released in July 2007, found that nearly 50% of teens admit to driving while texting. And with about 73% of teenagers owning cell phones as of 2007, according to Tween & Teen Lifestyle Report, expect the incidence of DWT to merely rise in the future.
MyDeathSpace, a tribute to deceased members of MySpace, features a growing number of examples of teen victims of “DWT” – driving while texting. More than 50% of teens report texting while driving, although a growing number of states are outlawing the practice.
- Multitasking – On average, teens perform about three to four other tasks while surfing the Internet and two to three others tasks while watching television, a study commissioned by Yahoo and the OMD ad agency reported in 2005. Some 73% of TV-online multitasking kids are engaged in “active multitasking,” defined as content in one medium influencing concurrent behavior in another, a 33% increase in active multitasking since 2002, notes a 2008 Grunwald Associates social networking study.
- Neo-Conservatism – U.S. teens appear to be more conservative than many of their global counterparts, including teenagers from India, China, Germany and France, according to a February 2006 Energy BBDO GenWorld Teen study. About half of U.S. teens qualify as “Red Teens” with strong conservative views, while the remaining half, Blue Teens, emphasize individuality and tend to reject tradition. Red Teens are more likely to believe in God (89% vs. 55% globally) and that abortion is never justified (40% vs. 12%).
- Advertising – Cultural differences also influence marketing. The Yahoo/OMD study found that teens in developing countries are more receptive to advertising than teens in developed countries. More than half of teens surveyed in Mexico and China and 68% in India agree that advertising is a good way to learn about trends and things to buy. Thirty-five percent or less of teens surveyed in France, Germany and the U.S. think so.
- Sexual Practices – In 2005, the National Center for Health Statistics released the U.S. government’s most comprehensive survey of sexual practices and found that more than half of all teenagers ages 15-19 have engaged in oral sex, including nearly a quarter of those who have never had intercourse.
If the names no longer sound familiar to you, you’re too old. Zac Efron, the star of Disney’s megahit, High School Musical, is the current female teen heartthrob. Miley Cyrus, Disney’s Hannah Montana star, displayed her teen spirit in a Vanity Fair photo that created a publicity storm, Britney-style.
- Alcohol/Drug Use – A 2007 National Institute on Drug Abuse annual survey found that the proportion of 8th graders reporting use of an illicit drug at least once in the past 12 months was 13% in 2007, down nearly half from 24% in 1996. But by the time teens become 10th graders, drug use rises to 28%, although that figure is down from 39% in 1997. Among 12th graders, drug use rises to 36%, a decline from a peak of 42% in 1997. There was a significant increase in the use of OxyContin among 12th-graders, with 10% of 12th-graders reported using the painkiller Vicodin, while 6% reported using OxyContin in the past year. Also noted was the significant increase in the use of sedatives and barbiturates among 12th-graders since 2001. Nearly half of America’s 5.4 million full-time college students use drugs or drink alcohol on binges at least once a month, according to a March 2007 study by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University. Alcohol remains the favored substance of abuse on college campuses by far, but the abuse of illicit drugs, rose from 31% in 1993 to 37% in 2005.
- Cigarettes – The good news is that cigarette smoking among teens is down. But who has time to juggle a cigarette when you have to update your Facebook profile, shop online, play videogames, or use your iPod while IMing on your phone?
- Social Networking – A survey conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project in Fall 2006 found that 55% of teens ages 12 to 17 used social networking sites. The survey discovered that older girls are most likely to have used social networking sites, with 70% of teen girls, ages 15 to 17, maintaing profiles on social networking sites, compared with 57% of boys in that age bracket. More than one in four (27%) of all students surveyed are heavy users of social-networking sites and services, reports a Grunwald Associates social networking study. That same study found that 71% of online tweens and teens connect to a social network at least once a week.
Three in four teens and tweens own at least one console or portable gaming system and plan to buy 3.1 games in 2008, up from 2.5 last year. The videogaming world is becoming tightly meshed with teen reality, making pop-culture icons out of such as videogame stars as Nintendo’s Super Mario.
- E-commerce – Nearly six out of 10 U.S. teens surveyed have made a purchase online, according to a June 2008 study conducted by OTX and The Intelligence Group. Responding online buying teens said they spent an average of $46 every month. Total spending among 13-to-21-year-olds was estimated at $120 billion in 2007, according to Harris Interactive. Apparel can be an important focus for status-conscious teens. Some of the most popular apparel sites visited by MySpace users are American Eagle, Hot Topic and Hollister.
- Texting – Several studies suggest that heavy-texting teens are more prone to disrupted sleep, restlessness, stress and fatigue. Meanwhile, the report “Writing, Technology, and Teens” shows that 38% of high-school-age students have used abbreviations like ‘LOL’ in school assignments, notes Richard Sterling, professor at the University of California Berkeley and contributor to this report.
Is it any surprise that our future social dialog will be heavily influenced by text messaging? David Crystal, a University of Wales language historian, believes that the written language will resemble text messages by 2020. “The Internet is fostering new kinds of creativity through language. It’s the beginning of a new stage in the evolution of the written language,” says Crystal. Leave it to our tech-savvy offspring to take us there first.
Ubertrends: Time Compression, Digital Lifestyle, Unwired
Value Propellants: Multi-Functional, Speed, Convergence, Connectedness, Freedom
July 3rd, 2008
In January, researchers at the California Institute of Technology and Stanford business school reported that people ranked the taste of a $45 wine higher than the same wine priced at $5. The same was true when a different wine was compared at $90 and $10.
The study discovered that higher priced wines sent more blood and oxygen to a part of the brain called the medial orbitofrontal cortex, whose activity controls pleasure. Perhaps that explains why over the past few decades, prices for consumer goods and services have gone “where no man has gone before,” to quote Startrek.
In June, a London Burger King announced it was serving a $190 burger made from Wagyu beef, topped with white truffles and Pata Negra ham and served in a bun topped with organic-white-wine-and-shallot-infused mayonnaise, pink Himalayan rock salt and Iranian saffron.
American excess. In 2003, New York restaurateur Daniel Bolud launched the $50 DB Bistro Burger Royale, made with boned short ribs, truffles and foie gras. Move over Bolud, a London Burger King now offers a $190 burger that makes yours look positively plebeian.
While many pricing tactics like this are aimed at generating PR, there are numerous sectors where pricing has long been used as a yardstick for product sophistication. The audiophile business caters to “golden ears” – consumers who do not blink while spending $6,000 for audio cables or $70,000 for a pair of Wilson Watt Puppy speakers.
That was then. A scan of the current audio scene shows that there are at least 53 speakers priced over $100,000, according to HigherFi. And while the jewelry business has long enjoyed the vagaries of eye-popping prices, there’s no question that the superpremium market spread outside its rarified audiophile atmosphere and infected other consumer categories.
In June, a jumbo black watermelon was auctioned in Japan for a record $6,100, the most expensive watermelon ever sold in that country. This after a pair of Yubari cantaloupe melons fetched a record $23,500 in May. In November 2007, Guerlain introduced a lipstick priced at $62,000. And we’ve already reported that Japan’s Fillico markets a $100 bottle of water in our “What’s Tappening” story.
French excess. This November, Guerlain launched a $62,000 “Kiss Kiss” lipstick, bejeweled with Swarovski crystals – a perfect complement for that Louis Vuitton Tribute handbag ($45,000), designed by Mark Jacobs, which sold out before it even hit retail stores.
Music mogul David Geffen reportedly sold his Jackson Pollock painting “No. 5, 1948,” for a record-breaking $140 million in 2006, exceeding the $135 million that cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder paid for Gustav Klimt’s “Adele Bloch-Bauer” that same year.
At least with art prices there’s the intrinsic value of rarity that may merit overpaying. But can the same be said for a $2 million Bugatti Veyron sports car? The trend – which acquired its “superpremium” nomenclature from the alcohol business, where bottle prices are setting similar records – does owe its logic to one phenomenon: the growing millionaire class.
The number of millionaires has exploded over the past decade. Figures released by the 12th Annual Merrill Lynch and Capgemini World Wealth Report in June shows that India and China are the fastest-growing millionaire generators. People whose net assets are valued at $1 million or more increased 23% in India, to 123,000 individuals, and 20% in China, to 415,000.
Indian excess. Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man, is building a 27-story mansion in the heart of the country’s commercial capital, Mumbai. Total cost of the home is expected to reach $1 billion, equal to the average annual income of 1.5 million Indians.
These two countries are followed by Brazil, whose 19% yearly growth rate raised its millionaire population to 143,000. Meanwhile, Barclays Wealth noted in May that 41%, or 436,000, of Singapore’s households would have assets of at least $1 million by 2017, compared with 39% in Hong Kong and 28% in Switzerland.
Is it any surprise then that USA Today reported that the Louis Vuitton Tribute bag ($45,000), designed by Marc Jacobs, sold out so quickly? Other people may not be able to tell that my handbag costs more than their car, but my medial orbitofrontal cortex tells me otherwise.
Ubertrends: Generation X-tasy
Value Propellants: Indulgence, Exclusivity, Prestige, Experience
June 30th, 2008
As the Digital Lifestyle engulfs society, the convergence between fashion and technology will accelerate. The e-wear and smart fabrics market is estimated at $400 million today and is projected to reach $700 million by 2010, according to Venture Development Corp.
But Venture Development hastily adds that the market is “fragmented, unprofitable…and may reach $700 million in break-even or marginally profitable revenue by 2010.” That sounds like a terrible assessment of a potentially lucrative market as this analysis shows.
Smart fabrics refer to textiles that use technology to create trendsetting benefits, like no-iron shirts, the ability to deflect knives, or anti-bacterial and deodorizing apparel. Products like this have already been introduced by TAG Apparel (Hong Kong), Nihon Uni (Japan) and Mizuno (Japan), respectively.
E-wear pushes the technology envelope one step further by integrating electrification, GPS, human interfaces or media into textiles. These “electro textiles” rely on fabrics with electronic media woven in, so current passes through the fabric instead of through wires.
Few consumers understand the benefits of e-wear. One reason is that most manufacturers in this segment do not have high consumer awareness. The major players that did launch e-wear entries merely experimented, providing products with little marketing support. GAP, for one, apparently cancelled its product line before it even arrived in stores.
GAPKids introduced the Hoodio, developed with San Francisco’s Wild Planet, in 2004. Priced at just $68, it featured cable channels and speakers in its hood. The Spyder Limited Edition iPod Ski Jacket (right; $2,200) promised a built-in iPod and integrated sleeve touch pad.
Levi’s only marketed its “anti-radiation” Dockers in the U.K. – trousers that featured a mobile-phone pocket lined with a radiation-reducing material called MDF. The MDF pocket promised to protect the wearer from potentially harmful cellular-phone radiation.
Mobile electronics have triggered a flood in demand for clothing and accessories compatible with popular digital devices. The reason is obvious: on-the-go professionals carry as much as 10 pounds (5kg) of tech tools, most added during the past 20 years.
As more people tote notebook computers, PDAs, mobile phones, digital cameras and maybe an iPod or GPS device, expandable, soft bags have all but erased sales of leather attaché cases, once the mainstay of business executives.
While the iPod accessories market is estimated in excess of $1 billion, marketers of all stripes are jumping on the digital lifestyle accessories bandwagon, as exemplified by this Baby Phat by Kimora Lee Simmons Sony PSP case ($35,000), a pure gold case encrusted with seven carats of diamonds.
The trend has spread to women’s handbags, which have markedly grown in size. And many big, expandable bags are getting wheels so consumers can lug even more stuff. In May, the Travel Goods Association announced another record sales year, with U.S. consumers spending a record $22.2 billion in 2007 on luggage, backpacks, travel/sports bags, business cases, computer bags, handbags, personal leather goods and travel accessories, largely fueled by our growing digital arsenal.
But this activity is just a warm-up for the next generation of e-wear that will literally electrify you. So-called “textronics” will allow clothing to be made with enough conductivity to power mobile phones and MP3 players without nary a power brick in sight.
And if you’re worried about getting lost in the digital future, DuPont is producing textiles that can be detected by global positioning satellites, allowing Alzheimer’s sufferers, for example, to be tracked, or to provide the precise location of wilderness trekkers in an emergency.
In 2006, designer Isaac Daniel introduced a limited-edition GPS shoe, complete with built-in distress button. GPS shoes join Nike running shoes capable to transmit your jogging performance via Bluetooth to an Apple iPod player for realtime exercise feedback.
The popularity of blue jeans and t-shirts as a global fashion uniform clearly says that consumers want easy-to-wear-and-care-for clothing. The $200 billion U.S. apparel industry has changed markedly over the past 50 years, but the market is virtually stalled with anemic annual growth. Once apparel makers discover this magnetic growth engine, e-wear and smart fabrics will electrify their business.
Ubertrends: Digital Lifestyle
Value Propellants: Convergence, Convenience, Time-saving
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June 28th, 2008
The texting revolution is reshaping the social dialog. Americans already send 30 billion text messages each month. In first quarter, Verizon Wireless delivered nearly 58 billion text messages in the U.S.
AT&T reported that a record 78 million text messages were sent during this season of “American Idol.” Globally, some 7 billion text messages are exchanged each day. As the conversation shifts to this burgeoning communication medium, trends are emerging:
- DWT– Remember that old joke about walking and chewing gum at the same time? The modern version is sending text messages, or checking e-mail for that matter, while driving. Unfortunately it’s no joking matter. DWT is the new DUI (“Driving While Texting” has become the new “driving under the influence”), reports The Wall Street Journal. A bill halfway through the New York State Legislature would make it illegal to type, read or send text messages while at the wheel. New York would join two other states, California and Minnesota, that have introduced similar legislation. These DTW efforts picked up steam in the U.S. following the release of a Nationwide Mutual Insurance survey that found one in five drivers texting while driving.
The DWT trend is not limited to the U.S. In the U.K., Rachel Begg, 19, entered prison on July 20 for four years after causing the death of Maureen Waites, a 64-year-old grandmother. Begg used her phone nine times during a 15-minute ride before ploughing into Waites’ car at 70mph.
- Text robbers – San Francisco once again became a trendsetter when two robbers who had stolen a mobile phone, texted someone in the stolen mobile phone’s address book and then robbed the text recipient’s iPhone.
- Medical texting – The NBC Today Show reported on June 5 that patients are now being reminded to take their medicine via SMS.
The Boston police department now accepts anonymous crime tips via SMS. Expect more services to be delivered via text message.
- luv ur nam – Some parents are inspired by cool SMS and e-mail spellings, and are naming children with unusual abbreviations and hyphenations.
- SMS capital – The Philippines is the SMS champion of the world. Fifty million Philippino subscribers sent 1 billion text messages each day in 2007. By comparison, China, with more than 10 times the texting fans, sent 1.6 billion text messages daily last year.
Nearly two-thirds of 700 students surveyed said their e-communication style sometimes bled into school assignments, according to a study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. “I think in the future, some e-mail conventions, like starting sentences without a capital letter, may well become accepted practice,” notes University of California, Berkeley Professor Richard Sterling. LOL!
Ubertrends: Time Compression, Unwired
Value Propellants: Multi-Functional, Speed, Connectedness
June 12th, 2008
In her concession speech, U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton used a pointed analogy to describe the ascent of women: “Although we weren’t able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it has about 18 million cracks in it and the light is shining through like never before.”
Those 18 million cracks refer to the popular votes Clinton received, many from women who viewed her presidential aspirations as a testament to the new-found power of women. A growing clout that’s being propelled by an Ubertrend dubbed “WAF” – an abbreviation of the “Woman’s Acceptance’s Factor.”
That Clinton was able to harness more popular votes than rival Barack Obama is a significant feat considering that just 160 years ago, on July 18, 1848 to be precise, the first Women’s Rights Convention was held in Seneca, New York, a movement that later came to be identified with the “suffragettes.”
Hillary Clinton may not have dodged sniper fire in Bosnia, but her resounding campaign for U.S. President made her the world’s most outstanding example of female power.
The term WAF was popularized by a Home Theater Spot discussion forum aimed at men seeking advice on how to obtain their better half’s approval before, or after, acquiring new gear. Humorously entitled “The Wife Acceptance Factor — Not in my house!” — this forum was dedicated to a contemporary phenomenon using a moniker that was semi- onomatopoetic code for man’s “better half.”
Read more…
June 11th, 2008
Last June, I lined up with about 500 other aficionados at San Francisco’s main Apple Store and picked up the much-anticipated iPhone. In its 10 months on the market, Apple has raised the bar for the mobile phone and the retail world. Now history is about to repeat itself. Apple is set to launch its highly anticipated “3G” model, which will be available on July 11.
The iPhone groundswell has swept over the smartphone market like a veritable tsunami. At the Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple reported that 6 million iPhones had been sold to date, more than half of its stated goal of 10 million by year end 2008.
Pandemonium in San Francisco. Harry Potter movie? Celebrity picture signing? No, it’s “iDay”: the Apple iPhone line on June 29, 2007. Expect a repeat performance this July.
While RIM now has more than 14 million BlackBerry users worldwide, its share of the U.S. smartphone market declined from 45% at the end of 2006 to 40% today. Most of that change was due to the 17% share the iPhone grabbed in its first six months.
The new BlackBerry 9000 will make the hearts of 14 million “CrackBerry” users pump faster. The BlackBerry cult, which has been responsible for such trends as “blirting” and the “BlackBerry prayer,” will positively swoon over the hi-res and high-speed 9000 or “BlackBerry Bold.”
AT&T will subsidize iPhone sales with a $200 rebate, lowering the price of entry to $199, which could result in a doubling of sales, if the 110-million-sold Motorola RAZR is any indication. Motorola saw RAZR sales rocket once its initial $500 asking price was cut to $150 in 2006 and $100 later.
The potential market is huge. Of the 2 billion mobile phones sold in 2007, about 125 million were smartphones — a number that analysts expect to soar. In fact, worldwide smartphone market shipments jumped 60% in the last three months of 2007 compared to a year earlier, according to IDC.
The iPhone is teaching consumers how to surf the Internet on their mobile phone. In February, Google reported to The Financial Times that iPhone users perform 50 times more searches than any other mobile handset.
The path to success for any programmable device is paved with developers, an area where Apple excels, with more experience than any other phone maker. More than 250,000 SDKs (Software Development Kit) have been downloaded since Apple released the iPhone SDK in March.
While R.I.M. opened the BlackBerry to outside Java developers in 2001, its add-ons have been simpler and more primitive than what is due to hit the iPhone. Even using the Safari browser interface that current developers are limited to, has resulted in some very cool applications, like Schmap.
That users are impressed with the iPhone’s pacesetting interface is underscored by a ChangeWave study of 3,600 professionals, which found that 72% of iPhone users said they were “very satisfied” with their devices, compared to 55% of BlackBerry users.
The ascendancy of Apple as a global consumer brand was underscored by the company’s dropping of “Computer” from its name. Not only has the iPhone become a major consumer retail hit since, but the company’s stores have also redefined retailing. From packaging to “Genius Bars” to roving sales associates who wirelessly ring up sales, Apple stores are a study in retail innovation.
Apple is not only revolutionizing the consumer electronics business but it is setting the standard in retailing and packaging too. The more than 170 Apple Stores, once dismissed as a flawed strategy, now ring up $4 billion in sales each year.
It’s evident that Apple is doing for the mobile phone what it did for computers, which will lead to a major shift in the way the Internet is accessed. By the early part of the next decade, mobile phones will double the size of the Internet, leading to yet another explosion in productivity. Now that’s worth getting in line for.
Ubertrends: Unwired, Digital Lifestyle
Value Propellants: Connectivity, Convenience, Convergence, Freedom, Speed
June 9th, 2008
Consumers are cutting the cord, and choosing to keep only their mobile phone. According to USA Today, 16% of U.S. households only have a wireless phone today. A new report by Sanford C. Bernstein found that New York land lines have dropped 55% since 2000.
Last June, The New York Times reported that while the Manhattan population has been growing at an annual rate of about 10,000 people in recent years, to about 1.6 million residents, the 2007 Verizon White Pages was 142 pages smaller than the 2006 edition.
Ubertrend: Unwired
Value Propellants: Freedom, Simplfication
May 17th, 2008
The news must have hit the water industry like a neutron bomb. Two University of Pennsylvania professors, Dr. Stanley Goldfarb and Dr. Dan Negoianu, reviewed scientific literature on the health effects of drinking lots of water. And while they could find no harm in drinking those eight, eight-ounce (225 ml) glasses of water each day, they also found zero benefit in doing so.
Their scientific review, to be published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, found that guzzling water to “flood toxins” out of one’s system was not supported by any scientific study. And as far as improving skin tone that’s “probably folklore,” Goldfarb said.
“The kidneys clear toxins. This is what the kidneys do. They do it very effectively. And they do it independently of how much water you take in. When you take in a lot of water, all you do is put out more urine but not more toxins in the urine,” Goldfarb noted.
SoBe’s Life Water is one in a wave of “multi-functional” waters that promise to do more than just quench thirst. Life Water is enhanced with vitamins designed to “shield” or “enlighten” life.
While that’s not good news for the bottled water business, the study is not likely to halt industry momentum. The U.S. bottled water business grew 800% in the past 20 years, reaching $9 billion a year and zipping from virtually nowhere to the No. 2 U.S. beverage, behind soft drinks. At its current pace, bottled water will surpass soft drinks in the next 10 to 15 years, predicts Beverage Marketing.
In fact, bottled water is the U.S.’ fastest-growing “refreshment beverage,” says the research firm, with 2006 bottled water consumption increasing 9.5% from the year before. Beverage Marketing predicts that by 2011, bottled water’s share of the liquid refreshment beverage market will be 29% — while soda — which currently holds about 42% — will dwindle to 34% that year.
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April 6th, 2008
In April 1968 a groundbreaking musical opened on Broadway. The theme echoed a contemporary sentiment, “Give me down to there hair. Shoulder length or longer. Here baby, there mama. Everywhere daddy daddy. Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair.”
The musical was “Hair.” And the message was clear: hair was “in.” But over the next 40 years, a sea-change shift occurred: body hair became the bane of humankind.
The 1968 debut of the Broadway musical “Hair” made long hair an icon of hippie culture. Today, long hair is out and, esthetically, body hair is out altogether.
The trend began in 1915, when Harper’s Bazaar ran the first ad to feature a photograph of a young woman with shaven underarms. The ad read, “Summer dress and modern dancing combine to make necessary the removal of objectionable hair.”
The underarm shaving trend then spread to women’s legs during World War II, when pin-up posters showed movie star Betty Grable with shaven legs. As they did in the 40s, Hollywood stars and movies are helping spread the hairless doctrine.
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March 27th, 2008
On U.S. television, there’s a game called “Amnesia.” Object of the game is to recall as many details as possible of one’s past life. A Dallas-based outfit called Memory Technologies Institute teaches “Mnemonics, the science of memory.” Nintendo, meanwhile, has sold more than 17 million copies worldwide of its Brain Age videogame for the DS player.
Brain fitness is on its way to becoming a big business. Nintendo’s uber-popular Wii videogame console is now being used to help memory-impaired patients recover some of their lost mental dexterity. One facility offering this new form of therapy has dubbed the treatment, “Wii-hab.”
Since its launch in May 2005 Nintendo has sold 17 million copies of Brain Age, a Nintendo DS videogame created by Tohoku University professor Dr. Ryuta Kawashima.
In San Francisco, a new “brain gym” promises to exercise your brain. vibrantBrains claims its “Neurobics Circuit Training” enables participants to work on such skills as memory, reasoning, visual scanning, word recall and quantitative facility using games and exercises. Industry reports suggest that the “brain industry” already generated $250 million in 2007.
As 450 million baby boomers in the western world head into retirement, they’re confronted with something no generation has ever faced before: a massive collective memory loss. Culprits: faster living, multitasking and less mental exercise.
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March 17th, 2008
The luxury travel explosion has another entrant. This week, Singapore Airlines announced it would enter the all-business-class arena by offering single-class planes on its non-stop flights between Los Angeles and Newark and Singapore. Like SilverJet, which flies from London’s Luton airport to Newark and L’Avion, which plies the same route from Paris, all-business-class airlines are riding a tidal wave of Time Compression.
The trend began in earnest in 1996 when British Airways launched the industry’s first seats that could lie completely flat for a superior sleeping experience. As globetrotting executives and jetsetters increasingly log more miles to monitor their far-flung activities, the trend caught on with Virgin Atlantic, Emirates and, in 2005, with the emergence of all-business-class airlines.
British Airways was the first airline to offer a real flat-bed seat in 1996. At a recent company event in San Francisco, BA shows how it has upped the ante with even more experiential seats.
While the major U.S. carriers have yet to test the model, international airlines are forging ahead. In 2002, Lufthansa tested an all-business-class flight between Newark and Duesseldorf, Germany, a service it has since expanded. British Airways and Virgin Atlantic Airways have announced plans to start all-business class flights of their own.
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March 7th, 2008
Last month’s unveiling of Apple’s MacBook Air unleashed a torrent of consumer passion, both pro and con. That Apple’s innovative design could peak so much consumer interest is not surprising. But the MacBook Air added a new wrinkle: it is one the most compromised laptops Apple has created since the launch of the original Mac Portable.
Like mobile phones, laptops are quickly becoming an extension of one’s persona. They’re such an essential part of the consumer’s communication toolbox that users now refer to their notebook computers as “my lappy.” The computer has evolved into a digital pet of sorts, one deserving its own diminutive.
ASUS fueled the mini-laptop trend last June with its Eee PC. Less than a year later, a host of marketers are launching their own offerings. HP’s Mini-Note ($500) has all the usual laptop features in a size deserving of the “lappy” nomenclature.
IDC expects notebook shipments to rise 26% in 2008, reaching about 137 million shipments worldwide, up from 109 million in 2007. Desktops shipments, meanwhile, totaled 151 million in 2007, essentially flat at 4% growth.
While laptops now make up 42% of global shipments, at its current growth pace, laptops will surpass desktop sales by 2009. The result will be a vastly expanded marketplace presenting new opportunities for innovative marketers.
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February 25th, 2008
The death of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi on February 6 was a singular reminder of the magical transformation that has taken place over the western world’s meditative landscape since the Beatles discovered this remarkable mystic in the late 60s.
It was during the Maharishi’s early rise to fame that small yoga ads started appearing in such local alternative weeklies as The Village Voice in New York City. Fast forward to the decade of the aughts. After bubbling under the surface for more than 30 years, yoga’s popularity is surging.
Vancouver-based lululemon athletica, whose wares have been featured on “Desperate Housewives,” has seen sales double every year since it was founded in 1998, reaching $149 million for the 12 months ending January 2007. Its Omega logo is now the “Louis Vuitton” equivalent of yoga.
In a time-compressed world, its meditative powers are now appreciated by an estimated 16.5 million Americans who practice this 5000-year-old art, according to a February 2005 Yoga Journal/Harris Interactive study. That’s more than triple the number a decade earlier when a 1994 Roper poll found 6 million yoga practitioners.
Yoga has gotten so big there’s a demographic audience dubbed “Yoga Mamas” – a desirable marketing target due to its heavily networked nature, both in social and technology terms. Yoga Mamas and other devotees helped create a $1 billion yoga fashion apparel market.
The mainstreaming of yoga “street fashions” has floated the boat of lululemon athletica, the premier yoga apparel brand. On July 27, the company raised $328 million from Canada’s largest initial public offering in 2007. lululemon’s shares rose 56% on the first day of trading, jumping $10 to $28 on Nasdaq, giving the Vancouver-based company a market value of $1.9 billion. Its shares (LULU) now trade at $32, as this story is written.
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February 18th, 2008
In 2003, The Yankee Group predicted in a report – entitled “The Death of the 30-Second Commercial” – that 11%, or $5.5 billion, of the $50 billion spent on TV advertising would be wasted, thanks to Digital Video Recorders (DVRs or PVRs).
“I think [TV advertising] really starts to be less effective as PVR penetration takes off, which we’re anticipating will occur over the next two years,” Aditya Kishore, The Yankee Group’s analyst who authored the report, was quoted as saying.
This week, The Nielsen Company said that playback from DVRs is actually increasing the amount of time people spend watching television, with viewing increasing 3% at 9:00 p.m. and 5% between 11:00 p.m. and midnight.
The periods compared were November 2005 and November 2007, during which time the DVR penetration level in Nielsen’s sample nearly doubled from more than 11% to nearly 22% in U.S. households.
TiVo, the company most identified with the DVR trend, has been unable to capitalize in any significant way on surging DVR sales. But its vaunted interface recently launched on Comcast cable TV in the Boston area, bringing hope to TiVo aficionados everywhere.
While Nielsen has yet to specify how much advertising DVR users are skipping, it appears that rumors of TV advertising’s imminent death may be premature.
February 14th, 2008
While it seems that every self-anointed sage and her brother had a list of predictions for 2008, savvy trendwatchers know that trends don’t adhere to calendar years. There’s one trend, however, that will reshape the U.S. market in the next year: HDTV. Most trends are initiated by human- or technology-related events, but this decade’s biggest media revolution is propelled by none other than the U.S. government.
The Federal Communication Commission (FCC) mandated that U.S. analog television broadcasting cease by February 17, 2009. Worried that unwitting consumers might be caught unprepared by this digital switch, the FCC also instructed stations to air ads to notify viewers of the impending change.
As a result, consumers will not be able to watch TV without hearing about the digital TV transition, and the remote possibility of losing reception after the switch.
A few days before the start of the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Warner announced that it would support the Blu-ray format exclusively, virtually sealing the fate of HD-DVD and unlocking more hi-def sales. This will help such new players as the Philips BDP7200, which ships any day now for $400.
We say remote because the transition will only directly affect the 12% of U.S. TV households, about 13.5 million homes, that receive over-the-air broadcast signals, according to The Nielsen Co. The Consumer Electronics Assoc. (CEA) reported on December 28 that 50% of U.S. households, or 56 million, already own a digital TV set, virtually all of whom likely receive TV via cable or satellite.
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February 4th, 2008
David Levy, an artificial intelligence researcher at the University of Maastricht, Netherlands, recently told LiveScience that by 2050 Massachusetts would become the first jurisdiction to legalize robot weddings.
Says Levy irreverently, “At first, sex with robots might be considered geeky, but once a story like ‘I had sex with a robot and it was great!’ appears someplace like Cosmo magazine, I’d expect many people to jump on the bandwagon.”
On May 13, The Associated Press reports, Honda’s stair-stepping Asimo robot will lead the Detroit Symphony Orchestra when it performs “The Impossible Dream” from “Man of La Mancha” during a program featuring the cellist Yo-Yo Ma.
A skeptical University of Edinburgh robot scientist provided this sober counterpoint: “who,” he asked, “would want to marry a robot?” The reality is we already live in a world where some people don avatars and lead double lives in Second Life. A few have even gotten married in their virtual-reality world, so the question is what does our robot future hold?
While scientists at the University of Edinburgh’s School of Informatics labor away on their vertical-application robots, around the globe in the Far East, a totally different attitude rules the emerging world of robots.
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October 25th, 2007
Marion Jones is capturing headlines with her alleged admission that she used steroids. While an overwhelming majority of Americans (75%) believe steroids use in sports should be banned, according to a poll of Facebook users conducted today, it’s clear that the use of artificial stimulants is moving forward in an inexorable march.
Marion Jones is simply part of the “Darwin on Steroids” trend, which itself is a phenomenon of the “Time Compression” Ubertrend, trends that suggest that evolution and life, respectively, are accelerating.
Another example is Barry Bonds. Fans have surmised for a while that Bonds used drugs to enhance his performance. A March 2004 USA TODAY/Gallup/CNN poll found that 64% agreed with the statement that Bonds “probably used steroids.”
Yet, his record-setting ball fetched an astonishing $752,467 from fashion designer Marc Ecko, who announced that the baseball Bonds hit for his record-breaking 756th home run would be branded with an asterisk before being donated to baseball’s Hall of Fame.
So, while a majority of fans disapprove of the use of steroids, we also have a culture that indirectly condones the near-robotic performance of steroid-pumping adults. That undercurrent points to a future that will produce superhuman, android-like performers who will battle each other in near-nightmare-like scenarios, as portrayed in many science-fiction movies.
If you’re skeptical about this scenario, witness the rapidly growing popularity of “ultimate fighting” spectacles, a sport that amazingly enough seems to find growing appeal among female sports fans.
The evolution of American football players clearly shows the “Darwin on Steroids” effect. The U.S. is breeding their favorite gladiators bigger and stronger, so they can better compete in their virtual “sudden death” matches.
There’s no question that the widespread use of steroids among athletes is causing a “nagging creep” to set in. Already, 13% of Facebook users polled by Ubercool believe steroids should be legalized, while another 12% are not so sure.
That nagging doubt is reflected among young athletes who are increasingly joining the steroids club. The National Institutes of Health’s ongoing Monitoring the Future study found in its 2004 survey that 270,000 eighth, 10th and 12th graders nationwide (3.4%) admitted steroid use, a 62% increase in use among 12th graders since 1991.
While steroid abuse is far less common than the use of so-called recreational drugs, many experts report its application is increasing among college and high school students.
As far back as 2002, USA Today reported that “teenagers, looking up to those elite athletes whose muscles ripple with steroid-enhanced power, are picking up some dangerous training tips, health experts warn.” At the time, estimates of steroids-using kids were in the 500,000 to 600,000 range with abuse by non-athlete females said to be “twice as high.”
Marion Jones merely joins the club that now also includes the once-lauded 2006 Tour de France winner Floyd Landis, who was recently stripped of his title and banned for two years. The Darwin on Steroids trend is simply unstoppable because science has become an integral part of human evolution. At the going rate, society will one day join the Romans and hail its “gladiators” with that same famous saying, “Ave, Caesar, morituri te salutant.” Only in our case Caesar is the almighty dollar and those who are dying off are the non-steroid-using athletes.
October 5th, 2007
Updated: There’s little doubt that the human body has changed markedly over the past century. One glance at movie photographs of 50 years ago shows how human physiology has evolved in the last half century. We’re compressing evolution. You might call this phenomenon “Darwin on Steroids.”
Although one could argue that the physical attributes of movie stars merely mirror the changing attitudes of casting agents, a casual observation of teens attending your nearest high school will confirm that major changes are under way.
The first thing you’ll notice is that high school kids today are much taller. In March 2005, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted that men and women alike had added an inch in height since 1960 — with the average American woman now standing 5-foot-4 and the average male hitting 5-foot-9-1/2.
That’s as puny as it sounds: the U.S. is coming up short in the height deparment. America used to be the tallest country in the world. But as Reuters reported in July, the average American’s height reached a plateau after World War II, and is gradually falling behind the rest of the world as it continues to grow taller.
By the time Baby Boomers reached adulthood in the 60s, most northern and western European countries had caught up or surpassed the U.S. Today, young adults in Japan and other prosperous Asian countries now stand nearly as tall as Americans do.
There are other changes too. Americans are far more overweight than just 25 years ago. In 1980, 46% of U.S. adults were overweight, compared to 65% today. And a third of U.S. adults are now obese, compared with 23% in 1994.
The acceleration of change: The human body is morphing rapidly, growing taller and more overweight in some instances. Changes are most evident when comparing old portraits to new.
What you’re witnessing is an acceleration of evolution. The human body is quickly adapting to changes in lifestyle, diets and perhaps even metaphysical attitudes. Although Americans are as active today as they were in 1970, according to a 2003 Harvard University study, they’re eating 200 calories more per day than they did just 10 years ago, which can add 20 pounds a year.
While the U.S. grew horizontally, the rest of the world reached for greater heights instead. In Holland, the tallest country in the world, the typical man now measures 6 feet (1.80m), a good two inches more than the average American. Even residents of formerly communist East Germany are taller than Americans today.
In 1850 the opposite was true: western Europeans were 2-1/2 inches (6cm) shorter than their American brethren. Evolutionary changes are not just limited to height. Japanese women are becoming curvier and taller as their diet, influenced by Western standards, increasingly includes more red meat and dairy products.
Why is this important? The reason is simple: taller people make more money. Studies have shown that an extra inch (2.5cm) of height can be worth about $1,000 extra a year in wages, after accounting for education and experience. If you’re 6 feet tall (1.80m), you likely earn about $6,000 more than an equally qualified 5-foot-6-inch person (1.70m).
According to a BusinessWeek article published in November 2005, ongoing surveys of more than 17,000 people in Britain and 12,000 in the U.S. conducted by Daniel Silverman, an assistant economics professor at the University of Michigan, found that even short teenagers who grow into normal-size adults are doomed to earn up to 13% less in the workplace than people who were tall as teens. This “height premium,” Silverman says, is comparable to wage gaps caused by gender and race.
On May 7, 2007, The Wall Street Journal noted that the average Japanese woman’s hips, at 35 inches (89cm), are an inch wider than those of women a generation ago. And women in their 20s wear bras at least two sizes larger than their mothers, says Wacoal, Japan’s largest lingerie company.
In the past 20 years, the shoe size of the average American woman has grown a full size to an 8 or 9, up from a 7 or 8. More than one-third of women now wear a size 9 or larger, up from 11% in 1987, The NPD Group reported in July 2004.
A shift in lifestyle lead to a big jump in childhood obesity, which has reached 20%. Although the caloric intake of young adults and teenagers has risen only 1% in the past two decades, physical activity has declined 13%, an analysis of federal statistics by the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill found in February 2005.
Since 1995, Harris Interactive has asked adults to name their two or three favorite leisure-time activities. Eight years ago, 38% of replies involved activities requiring exercise, including fishing, gardening, playing sports, swimming, walking, hunting, bicycling, hiking, running or dancing. Now only 29% of replies involve exercise.
According to a multi-country study, U.S. teens were more likely to eat fast food and snacks, drink sugary sodas, and most likely to be driven to school and other activities, contributing to a more sedentary lifestyle, reports the U.S. Maternal and Child Health Bureau. In fact, fast-food consumption increased fivefold among children since 1970, says a January 2004 Children’s Hospital Boston study.
Japanese lingerie maker, Wacaol, pictured above, reports that Japanese women’s bust sizes are increasing. They’re not alone. Since the 1920s, British women’s busts have grown four inches (10cm), going from a B cup to a C.
At the September 2002 Leicester science festival, Professor Andrew Prentice, a nutrition expert from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, remarked that people are now undergoing changes similar to those occurring two centuries ago, when Europeans shot up in height by 12 inches (30cm) or more. “I’m talking about the remarkable change that has occurred in man’s evolution in just the twinkling of an eyelid,” the BBC quoted Prentice as saying.
Although most of the baseball-loving world could care less that Barry Bonds took steroids, there’s no question that in less than 20 years, Bonds morphed from a 185-pound (84kg) Pittsburgh Pirate to a hulking, 230-pound (104kg) Giants outfielder, who, suddenly at age 37, hit a record-setting 73 home runs.
Although Bonds claims he’s not on steroids, Darwin clearly is.
Ubertrend: Time Compression
Value Propellants: Survival, Speed, Beauty, Gluttony
September 30th, 2007
A major trend is sweeping through our media universe. It began innocently enough with Friendster in 2003, which came from nowhere to become the celebrated buzz of 2003. But Friendster was quickly toppled from its social network pedestal by an even faster moving phenom: MySpace.
When Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. acquired MySpace in July 2005 for $580 million, the move received a lukewarm reception in some financial circles. Now that MySpace has more than 200 million member accounts, making the popular social net larger than Brazil, the fifth largest country in the world, and each account costing a mere $2.90 each, those nay-saying nitpickers are signing a totally different tune.
But there’s an even faster-growing social net among us. Facebook, which was conceived as a university-only digital meet market, unlike MySpace, which traced its roots to music trendsetters, has soared from 10 million in September 2006, just prior to Facebook opening its ivory gates to everyone, to 40 million this week, more than quadrupling its member base.
If your inbox is anything like mine, it’s being clogged by Facebook “friend” requests, reflecting the groundswell in popularity that this social network is currently enjoying. How is it that an upstart was able to wrest away the crown of “hotness” from its massive social brother?
Simplicity is clearly a core Facebook strength. Unlike MySpace’s cluttered spaghetti-code interface, Facebook is a breath of fresh air, far more elegant and easier to use. While Facebook wins in the digital cosmetics department, it still needs to create that essential “community” feeling, which neither MySpace or Facebook possess, perhaps due to a lack of content leadership from above.
Still, when Facebook CEO and Founder, Mark Zuckerberg announced on May 25 that Facebook would open its interface to outside developers, thereby allowing third-party applications to enhance the Facebook experience, the Palo Alto-based company discovered an age-old technology tactic that dates back to dBASE days, for those who can remember that far back.
Zuckerberg dubbed the move of opening up the Facebook architecture through an “API” (application developer’s interface), akin to creating a “Social Operating System,” or SOS. The tactic has worked beautifully. When I attended the Facebook Developer’s Garage a few weeks ago, the electric atmosphere in the way-too-small room at company headquarters had the air of a revivalist meeting.
Facebook’s popularity is being propelled by the people in this room, Facebook application developers, who overwhelmed Facebook’s corporate office in Palo Alto at the “Facebook Developer Garage.”
That feeling of exalted exuberance was cemented by “Lee,” from venture capital firm Alta Partners, who exhorted the troops with a cheer that knocked the room down: Join the Facebook bandwagon. This company will IPO in late 2008 with a valuation of more than $100 billion! Tying your fortunes to Facebook will pay off handsomely for anyone smart enough to ride on the company’s coattails.
While casual observers might see this type of cheerleader chant as only another manifestation of irrational exuberance, they’re forgetting that Facebook, and all those thousands of other social networks already online or in the planning stages, are being propelled by a fundamental shift in the rules of social interaction.
What Bebo, Friendster, MySpace, Piczo and the Facebook avant garde have already discovered is that social networks can put network building on steroids, giving you a Barry Bonds-like edge in a world of wimpy non-social netters. And if the Internet can be blamed, in some respects, for driving many a consumer into an asocial cocooning corner, it’s quite evident that social networking is the anti-dote to uncivilization, to paraphrase that Club Med’s famous tagline.
It’s this fundamental shift that makes social networking so incredibly exciting. It’s also what is fueling an onslaught of new social nets, aimed at every conceivable niche. Already, Johnson & Johnson has forked over more than $10 million for social network Maya’s Mom. And VantagePoint Venture Partners announced that I had led a round in social network Multiply, aimed at boomers.
We think this only the beginning. What will make this trend explode is the discovery of marketers that of social engagement marketing, the inevitable outflow of the social engagement media world will fundamentally help rewrite the rules of social engagement.
It’s that kind shift in consumer values that will help vault this trend into the global limelight. If Lee’s forecast is any indication, social networking could one day make Google’s IPO look like a day at the beach. Such a feat can only be possible if Facebook succeeds in changing some fundamental social interaction values.
And there’s plenty of evidence that such a change is already underway. About 260,000 daily users send a virtual toast via the “Booze Mail” application What might want one to send others a drink they can’t consume. Well, it may find its roots in a college-driven prank, but like the old saying goes, “it’s the thought that counts.”
Facebook already offers more than 4,000 applications, since announcing its program May 25. “Booze Mail” lets you send friends a drink. Apps like this, and others like SuperPoke! and FunWall, point to a revolution in social engagement.
There’s no question that our social dialog is undergoing a sea change shift, as the foregoing suggests. We can’t wait to see how the world will evolve around this new social interaction. Social engagement media have arrived and things will never be the same.
September 13th, 2007
“Nasty comments, sometimes even death threats, have become ubiquitous on virtually any site that seeks to engage readers in discussion,” reports USA Today. The publication speculates on what trends could be behind this rude behavior.
Part of the blame lies with our new-found love for interactivity. The blogosphere, which has soared from 100,000 blogs in March 2003 to nearly 94 million today, according to blog-tracker Technorati, provides an easy means for readers to comment, helping the phenomenon surface.
“Ur ugly u suk and u should die,” is a typical comment that appears beneath one of the many videos posted on YouTube. This type of social depravity has led to much discussion, and video responses, on YouTube and elsewhere online.
While the story’s writer, Janet Kornblum, correctly surmises that anonymity is a major driving force behind the growing rudeness of society, this outrageous behavior is actually part of the much larger Casual Ubertrend, which has rendered courtesy a thing of the past.
Anonymity was certainly not involved in an incident that had Faith Hill berating a fan for grabbing her husband’s private parts during a concert at the Cajundome. The incident, captured on video, shows just how brazen society has become:
During a Soul2Soul 2007 tour stop at the Cajundome in Lafayette, Louisiana Saturday, country star Faith Hill had to reprimand an overzealous fan who had grabbed husband Tim McGraw’s crotch, an incident captured on mobile phone video naturally.
Breeding a society that’s less polite and much more aggressive in attitude, the Casual Ubertrend is also to blame for a number of “attack videos” that recently received media coverage.
One video, which recently appeared on YouTube and which shows a young girl from San Mateo, Calif. being viciously attacked by a school mate, caused the despondent victim to abandon high school due to fear and depression.
The Internet has significantly lowered the barrier to asocial engagement by providing an easy way of adding no-holds-barred commentary.
As the above New Yorker cartoon pointedly suggests, our interactive future may have us all singing the participatory blues one day.
Ubertrends: Casual
Value Propellants: Aggression, disruption, dominance, informality, shock
August 1st, 2007
In 2003, New Scientist magazine reported that one-third of Americans suffered from something it called celebrity-worship syndrome, which it abbreviated as CWS. The growing popularity of celebrity-obsessed blogs, like Perez Hilton and TMZ.com, have surely boosted CWS. In a sign of the times, TMZ staffers are now regularly interviewed by the major media, often pre-empting People and US Weekly.
Pointing to the potential future implications of CWS is the growing number of mobile phones with cameras, a figure that will pass the 1 billion mark this year. Within a decade, an armada of worker bees equipped with some 4 billion camera phones will lead to an explosion in consumer-generated, celebrity-obsessed media.
Imagine for a moment, a live-updated, 24/7 show of pictures submitted globally. Uploads would likely number in the hundreds of millions each day. Timely example: One of the first, if not the first, iPhone paparazzi photos, taken by yours truly:
Pixel Paparazzi: Courtney Love captured with an iPhone outside The Mercer Hotel in New York’s SoHo district on Friday, July 13 at 6pm. This may well be the first paparazzi picture taken with an iPhone. The photo is also notable for its obvious image recording flaw, as you can see in upper left, center.
With its diminutive size and widespread popularity among media and creatives, the Apple iPhone could well become the poster child for digital voyeurism, part of the Voyeurgasm Ubertrend. It looks like Celebrity Worship Syndrome is set to truly reveal itself.
Ubertrends: Voyeurgasm
Value Propellants: Curiosity, thrill-seeking
July 22nd, 2007
One of the biggest Ubertrends ruling lives today is Time Compression, or the “acceleration of life.” Ask any CEO if they would like to fly faster and you’d get a resounding “yes.” That’s why I truly lament the demise of the Concorde in 2003, it was a step backward in the evolution of humanity. Well, fret no more Texas billionaire Robert Bass is coming to our rescue.
At Paris’ fabled Le Bourget air show last week, the Aerion debuted, an US$80 million supersonic jet that will carry eight passengers from Chicago to London in less than six hours, a flight that now takes more than eight hours.
But Bass is not alone. A $2.5 billion Nevada start-up, called Supersonic Aerospace International, has hired Lockheed Martin’s advanced Skunk Works unit to develop a 12-seat jet, the QSST or “quiet supersonic travel,” which will be able to fly at 1,200 mph or Mach 1.8, while producing only a whisper of the annoying boom once emitted by the retired Concorde.
Over the next decade, The Teal Group estimates, manufacturers will turn out some 12,000 business jets, worth $173 billion. This year alone, manufacturers will produce 999 business jets, worth $16.4 billion, according to Teal. That is nearly double the 2003 output, when sales bottomed out after the last big growth spurt of 2001-2 ended.
June 25th, 2007
It’s rare feat indeed for any light to achieve a trendy status in the US$3.2 billion lightbulb industry. But LEDs (light emitting diodes) offer an entirely new palette for architects and designers. They’re incredibly small, come in millions of colors, last a dozen years and don’t put out much heat.
LEDs, previously used only for signals and indicators, were a US$4 billion to US$5 billion business in 2006, with sales expected to hit US$10 billion by the end of the decade, according to Strategies Unlimited.
Meanwhile, researchers are taking LED to the next level, engineering them to positively affect moods and health. As they become better and cheaper, LEDs are set for a big splash, first replacing neon lights, then the U.S.’ 4 million traffic lights, finally they’ll invade the home, like the Koncept Z-BAR LED lamp:
The Koncept Z-BAR’s (US$130) 66 LEDs generate 100 lumens, enough to help it win an I.D. Magazine “best of category” award.
LEDs are being used to light jewelry store displays and to provide ambiance lighting in restaurants. Hotels, like Las Vegas’ Bellagio, use LEDs from Space Cannon to provide exterior color accents. And this month, Toronto’s 1,815-foot CN Tower is being lit with more than 1,300 color-changing LEDs. Meanwhile, automobiles, such as the 2008 Cadillac CTS feature both interior and exterior LED lights.
And to prove just how valuable the market has become, Royal Philips Electronics offered US$688 million last Tuesday to acquire Color Kinetics, a decade-old Boston company that designed the CN Tower’s new lighting and holds patents on systems to control LED color and brightness.
June 24th, 2007
The 28-Feb-06 Wall Street Journal, citing the Boston Consulting Group, reported that “The U.S. mass-luxury market alone had US$500 billion in sales in 2005, or about 15% of total consumer spending, and is growing 10% to 12% annually.”
The Kipini Conservancy is a convergence of luxury and sustainability and bills itself as a project “Where Conservancy Meets Luxury.” The site reads: “Protection of natural resources is the mandate of a conservancy. Kipini ventures further, creating an endeavor that matches imagination with stewardship of the environment.”
The Dunes at Kipini, a 70,000-acre conservancy, blends luxury with the wilds of the African landscape in Kenya. Prices start at $1.9 million.
June 12th, 2007
According to Amazon.com, sales for Nintendo’s Wii increased last week and ranked No. 4, up from No. 5 a week prior, while Microsoft’s Xbox 360, ranked 24th this week, was down from 19 a week ago. Sony’s PlayStation 3 remained flat at No. 27. To date, 2.5 million units of the Wii have sold in the U.S. alone.
In fact, the Wii phenomenon has already gripped others. ASUS introduced a personal computer, the Eee 701 PC, which rhymes with Wii and stands for “easy to learn, easy to play and easy to work,” says ASUS Chairman & CEO, Jonney Shih.
June 12th, 2007
