s consumers, we can't help but be entertained by the latest gadgets the industry throws our way. It's easy to become cult followers as we marvel at the pace of consumer product integration, personalization and networking.

To home in on the consumer cult phenomenon for this special section, EE Times editors chose five challenges and then quizzed industry players on how they'd go about meeting them. Initiatives ranged from the ridiculous to the sublime — from an all-in-one Dick Tracy-style wristwatch to an artificial eye that restores sight. The section then discusses seven "smart" enabling technologies that could help meet the challenges these designs present.

Bookending the Initiatives and Technologies sections are an exploration of the roots of the consumer electronics era and a look at some of the consumer sector's brightest success stories — and a few of its maddening failures.

The design window used to allow some 18 to 24 months from idea to delivery; now that window is being squeezed ever tighter by competitive factors on a global scale. If one cannot get a lower-cost product into consumers' hands by the next holiday season, rest assured that one's competition will, by minimizing parts costs or by manufacturing offshore.

Moreover, the consumer can be as fickle as a dandelion puff in the breeze. Consumer acceptance rides as much on emotional factors as on those that are easier to quantify.

Yet the market keeps growing. Market research firm Gartner predicts that the heart of consumer electronics — semiconductors — will attain global revenue of $34 billion this year. Add to that all the other smart technologies — both hardware and software — that form the underpinnings of the gadgets we love, and you get more than the need to appease a cult following: You get the industry of the 21st century.

— Nic Mokhoff
Editor, Special Features

 
Essay
The consumer as king: a benign tyrant?
Brian Fuller announces the birth of the consumer era and has brought with it a tectonic shift in the electronics business that we are only now beginning to fathom.
by Brian Fuller

 
Initiatives
On 'Dick Tracy' Time
All-in-one gadget on the wrist is out of vogue; a mobile phone in the pocket has already replaced the watch.
by Junko Yoshida

Personal Transporter
The wheel has a fundamental appeal, but blending it with legged capability would support innovation.
by Chappell Brown

The car as an SoC on wheels
by Chappell Brown

Replaceable eyeball
'Bionic eye' builds on prostheses milestones with an implantable artificial organ as the goal.
by R. Colin Johnson

Self-Navigating Vehicle
Progress is logical: from audible warnings to vehicles that respond to user commands with door-to-door service.
by Charles J. Murray

Electronic Paper
Continuously flexed screens would be rolled and unrolled repeatedly as a display scroll.
by Ron Wilson

Two approaches to electronic paper
by Ron Wilson

 
Technologies
Smart Processors
Initiatives in parallel processing, instruction sets and novel architectures pose power/performance trade-offs.
by David Lammers

Smart Radios
Cognitive radio's Knowledge of dead zones, interference and usage patterns promises intelligent communications.
by Patrick Mannion

Smart Power
Rechargeable batteries, fuel cells and management schemes contend to optimally power portables.
by Stephan Ohr

Smart Design
To get something inexpensive that works--and sells--out the door fast puts the onus on design tools.
by Richard Goering

Smart Software
'Creeping featurism' fights user friendliness in the latest embedded consumer gadgets.
by Jim Turley

Smart Displays
Cost will drive acceptance of flat-panel technologies as they try to displace the stalwart CRT.
by Spencer Chin

Smart Storage
Probes, millipedes creep forward, as perpendicular recording embraces era of digital media.
by Rick Merritt

Storage demand remain insatiable
by Rick Merritt

 
Endgame
The brightest ideas
Industry veteran and contributing editor Girish Mhatre takes a look at successes and failures in consumer electronics.
by Girish Mhatre

Ten consumer electronics product teardowns
by Girish Mhatre

 
The Issues
Laying the foundation for the next-generation of distributed computing
by Rick Merritt

Wireless, wireless everywhere and now it starts to think
by James Neel and Jeffrey H. Reed

Cult of the Consumer PDF Downloads
English (10 mb)	French (66 mb)	German (59 mb)	Japanese (46 mb)