Memory
Cards
Time was memory
cards were the ultimate gadget accessory. Mobile phones, digital cameras, video
camcorders and more came alive with a large memory card and we filled them like
they were going out of fashion. Well now they are. Yes cameras and video
cameras aren't going to give up on expandable memory any time soon, but as
Cisco has proved and as we have just discussed: both these sectors are already
under threat.
The other major
use is in handsets and here memory cards are slowly being ignored in favour of
ever greater native storage. This comes partly due to NAND Flash memory prices
coming down, but it is equally driven by practicality. Installing applications
and saving data on something which can be removed from a device without warning
makes software developers and phone manufacturers nervous. Android took nearly
two years to support app installation on memory cards and app makers have been
reticent to adopt it. Meanwhile iOS, webOS,
BlackBerry OS and Windows Phone have never allowed it. In
fact Apple, HP and Microsoft don't provide microSD card slots on their handsets
for customers to use.
Since this trend
has only increased in recent years, despite memory cards getting ever cheaper
and more capacious. With Cloud based storage also on the rise memory cards may
ultimately be relegated to niche sectors.
TVs
Just bought a
shiny new High Definition TV full of cutting edge features? Believe it or not,
televisions will eventually be history. Their nemesis? Projectors.
The benefits are
obvious: projectors are smaller, lighter and can produce an image of almost any
size. The downfalls? They are expensive, don't work well in daylight, need to
be positioned on the other side of the room and have high running costs. All
this is changing.
