The Top 5 Most Influential Products of the Last Decade

I went to Best Buy last weekend even though I didn't need to get anything specific (do you really need a reason to go and play with gadgets?).  Even though I was disappointed that there doesn't seem to be a gadget these days calling my name to "BUY ME" (hopefully this will change as holiday season rolls around), I left with a real appreciation of where the digital media industry has come. 

As I thought about how I took the current products on the market for granted (HDTVs, snazzy cell phones, and digital cameras), it made me appreciate how far technology has come in the past decade.  The last decade has seen some amazing breakthroughs in consumer products that have changed the landscape of the industry and what users have come to expect in their products.  Here is my list of the top 5 products and services of the last decade  that have had a lasting impact on the market:

TiVo (March 1999)    

Our short little friend has had quite an impact on how we watch TV.  Now, our entire TV experience is effectively an On-Demand experience, letting us watch "time-shifted" content whenever it's convenient.  Of course, the impact its had on the ad industry is well-documented.  It still remains to be seen how the advertisers will deal with this.  I've started to notice ads created with the characters from the show I'm watching, making me think my show is resuming.  Sneaky, but ultimately, they'll need something better than this to get me to see ads again.   

Napster (June 1999)

They may not have been the first peer-to-peer network, but Napster is the brand name that everyone remembers that really turned the music industry upside down.  The music industry is still trying to figure out how to grow profits in a world of highly available pirated music.  Even though the original version of Napster is long gone, many others such as BitTorrent have taken its place. A recent report from Sandvine just came out showing that 44% of North American traffic is peer-to-peer file sharing.   It's safe to say the original Napster has left its mark on the content acquisition world.

HDTV (1998)

ABC was the first broadcast network to showcase HD, back on November 1st, 1998 with "101 Dalmatians".  Now, it's gotten to the point where I will refuse to watch a game on standard def.  It's amazing how HDTV has completely changed the expectations of the video consumer.  Even though the first network broadcast was in 1998, it wasn't until sports programming was broadcast in HD in 2004 that the market for HDTV's turned mass market.  That in turn has led to a broad variety of sit coms, news, and cooking shows sprouting up in HD.  All of this available content is certainly having a profound effect on other industries. I won't go into my views on Blu-Ray right now, but my initial thoughts are around the impact HDTVs will have on the theater viewing business.  Home audio systems are now rivaling the theater experience and now the picture I get on my HDTV is better than what you get at the theater (digital cinemas will be here soon, but mass market availability is still a couple years away).  And at $10 a ticket, $8 for popcorn, and $7 for a coke, my $40 trip to the movies for two can be had for $5 with On-Demand, all from the comfort of my living room and a better visual experience. 

iPod (October 2001)

 The iPod was officially introduced in 2001, and has been on a tear ever since.  Of course, other MP3 players were on the market prior to the iPod, but the iPod's intuitive user interface made the gadget a must-have among music listeners and really propelled the advent of portable digital music.  To this day, Apple effectively controls the digital music ecosystem by consistently improving the product and continuing to make it seamless to use with iTunes.  And with iTunes proprietary format, Apple has locked-in customers to its platform, creating a big headache for anyone who wants to leave the Apple ecosystem.  But why would you?  Their products continue to out-innovate their competition and provide the most user friendly interface on portable devices.

Nintendo Wii (November 2006)

It's only been less than 2 years, but the gaming console industry has taken quite a shift.  The Wii has expanded the customer base for gamers by bringing the simplicity and fun back that we hadn't seen since our our original 2D NES hit the scene with the best game of all time, Super Mario Bros.   Now, kids and adults who aren't interested in complex RPG have a casual platform to interact with.  And for anyone who's played Wii Boxing, it's a great workout!  Trust me, you'll be sore after you play it.  The premise of motion control has clearly hit mainstream.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, the iPhone has elements of motion control built in that application developers can take advantage of to now bring Wii-like experiences to other devices.   We've only scratched the service of motion control applications and it will be interesting to see what else is around the corner.

It will be interesting to see what products make "most influential" lists over the next decade.  I fully expect a product that finally makes content management and ubiquitous access throughout the home to be on the list.   

Comments

[R. Biswas]

Though not technically a "product" as you've used in your examples above, I believe the Google search engine has profoundly changed the way we live, including the way people conduct business, kids learn, old friends reunite, people get help for problems...just to name a few. Think about how incredibly fast and simple it is to research almost any topic you want with just a few clicks. No more do kids need to sit in the library for hours flipping through encyclopedias to write up reports. Think about how quick it is to instantly learn about something that just happens to pop into your head by entering a few search terms. Or how easy it is to research or figure things out at work without having to disturb any co-workers. Life is just much simpler thanks to Google, and kids today are going to be a whole lot smarter than previous generations, with knowledge so easily attainable. (Of course, this can be a double-edged sword too, but that's another topic in itself.) So I believe this is easily one of the most influential technologies of our time, and highly transformational--though maybe not in such an obvious way as a physical product.

[Anuj Agrawal]

Nice example. There is no doubt search engines have helped to organize and access the vast amount of data available on the Web. I can certainly relate to your example of not having to go to a library anymore for simple information and the ease of Googling the most random things. It is comical that the next generation will have no idea what a Dewey Decimal system is.