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The
merger of Compaq and HP might be the most talked about issue
in the IT industry. But there’s another ‘merger’
that’s catching everyone’s interest—it’s
the fusion of Consumer Electronics and Computer Hardware.
It’s not enough to sell a PC or a printer anymore. What
people want are cool electronics gadgets and smart communications
devices (mobile phones and pagers). Need proof of that?
Take the just concluded Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in
Las Vegas. Its organisers sold a record 1.2 million square
feet of exhibition space. Official figures peg attendance
in excess of 126,000. Last November, Comdex (the world’s
most prominent IT exhibition) attracted 125,000 attendees
and exhibitor space was down to 750,000 square feet. And,
guess who came to CES this year? Bill Gates (Microsoft) delivered
the keynote address and unveiled the Xbox (a gaming console).
Intel CEO Craig Barrett did not gloat about the latest Pentium
processor this time, for he had an armload of electronic devices—a
new portable digital audio player, a wireless Web tablet,
and a wireless chat device. HP’s Carly Fiorina wasn’t
talking about the latest laser printer or HP’s newest
server—the message was on how to take better photos while
on vacation.
Gadgets and devices have for long been the domain of techies.
But they have appealed to the common man only now, thanks
to their simplicity and mainstream (read useful) applications.
Pry open the clamshell casings of these devices and you’ll
see something familiar—memory, hard disks, storage cards
(instead of floppies), colour LCD screens—even Intel
processors. Beneath the simplicity of control panels on these
devices, there’s the sophistication of digital hardware.
But why did it take so long for this ‘merger?’Let’s
take a trip back in time to 1990. There are personal computers
with 20 MB hard disks and barely 1 MB of main memory. LCD
screens are limited to digital wristwatches, so we have to
contend with bulky monitors having green or amber monochrome
displays. Now try putting this kind of technology into, say,
an MP3 player—it would have to be as large as an Open
Reel Tape Recorder.
Of course, back in 1990, they did have microchips in electronics
devices, but their functionality was quite limited. So the
more sophisticated the device, the more chips it had—resulting
in a bulky form factor. Thus memory chips, processors and
hard disks at that time weren’t ready yet for portable
devices.
With advances in technology, chip manufacturers moved to smaller
micron processes. So circuits on the chip shrunk, thereby
enabling integration of several chips (and functions). This
also increased memory storage capacity on a per chip basis.
They call it Very Large Scale Integration. So motherboards
and daughterboards (cards) in PCs shrank—and computing
hardware was now ready for mobility. Of course, the technology
advanced in other areas too—storage, displays, etc. So
desktop PCs evolved into laptops and notebook computers.
Although computer hardware was now small enough for portable
devices, it wasn’t used in consumer electronics devices
yet.
What makes a PC appealing? It’s the applications you
install on it. The same was happening with digital devices.
We needed killer apps that would really make them useful.
One such is MP3 audio. MP3 was invented at the Fraunhofer
Institute in Germany and Shawn Fanning created Napster to
exchange those MP3 songs on the Net. Then people wanted their
favourite MP3 songs with them on the road. The Diamond Multimedia
Rio MP3 player was the answer.
We now have portable MP3 jukeboxes with hard disks; mini printers
that connect directly with digital cameras; thin LCD monitors
that also function as TV sets; mobile phones with integrated
PDAs; hard disk video recorders; gaming consoles with integrated
CD-ROM units; and other convergence products. That’s
the fusion of consumer electronics and computer hardware for
you.
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