TheGwen

User-Generated Devices UGD, allowing people to enjoy themselves making their own equipment with friends, are making a showing in the electronics industry, fueled by the outsourcing of development and manufacturing, open constituent technologies, and other trends. Only companies capable of discarding the paradigm of volume production will be able to evolve apace with this new dimension in user participation.

The electronics industry has delivered a wide variety of entertainment to consumers: radio, television, audio, mobile phones, games and more. The enormous quantity of equipment shipped from the factories of electronics manufacturers has fascinated users around the globe. Profits from sales provided the capital for new research and development R&D, creating a host of new technologies. Electronics grew into a gigantic industry by delivering identical products to as many users as possible…

via [Feature] Everybody’s a Manufacturer: Era of User-Generated Devices 1 — Nikkei Electronics Asia — May 2009 – Tech-On.

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One excellent example is the development environment represented by widgets, now enjoying increasing use in PCs and becoming available to digital appliance users as well. In Sept 2008, Sony Corp of Japan began supplying the widget development tools for the AppliCast content download function packaged with its liquid crystal display (LCD) TVs to individual users. Although the tool had formerly been available only to professional developers, Sony released it to the general public. Widgets created by individuals run on the TVs. Similar tools are also provided by a host of newly emerged manufacturers in Internet appliances such as chumby industries inc of the US, in the form of “Web gadgets”.

The movement toward providing an environment supporting unrestricted Internet service to users, by mounting browsers, is spreading from flatscreen TVs into digital cameras. A variety of miniature detachable modules are available for digital appliances now, making it possible for users to modify shape, function and other characteristics with plug-ins.

In the second quarter of 2009, modu Ltd of Israel will release a mobile phone that can change its appearance, function, etc to match specific usage. The ultra-compact mobile phone is inserted into a “jacket” module for use, and a variety of different jackets offer various designs, functions, etc, as needed.

Consumer Imagination

All of these activities, however, are likely to create new ways to enjoy digital appliances, thanks to unique user ideas.

Equipment manufacturers provide the platforms, but users are thinking up ways to use them that the manufacturers never imagined. If these new uses appeal to a large number of users, all of a sudden a best-selling product is born.

Users no longer merely passively receive information from manufacturers, mass media and other sources, because now the environment makes it easy for them to obtain specialized information such as manufacturer technology. This simplified access is not limited to merely end products, but is rapidly spreading to the R&D field, almost in the realm of constituent technology, where specialized knowledge is crucial….