Fallacy or Out-dated? Part 1.

Throughout our technological convergence blog we have argued about whether or not the concept of a ‘Black Box’ which will fulfil all of our technological needs (from surfing the web to watching television) will ever truly exist or if it is simply a fallacy. The goal of my coming posts will be to outline some of the arguments on the fallacy side of the ‘black box’ debate and consider how accurate they are in the current marketplace. Today’s statement up for analysis will be:

"Technological development is moving at such a rapid pace that ‘black boxes’ are developed and then quickly made obsolete as the individual moves onto newer technology, leaving them with numerous devices that can perform similar tasks and a great deal of clutter" (Serving History, 2010)

Although it cannot be argued that technology is moving at a rapid pace, technical obsolescence of hardware (where an existing product becomes obsolete due to its replacement by a superior version of the product) is actually decreasing in many industries as companies invest larger amounts of money into developing high quality products that they aim to support for larger periods of time (Apple are a key exception to this logic as their current products are considered functionally obsolescent and produced in order to generate around 50% margin per sale *see graph below) (Apple Insider, 2007).

Furthermore companies are actually producing many of their hardware devices at a loss in order to get them into the hands of consumers; they then make money through charging for use of the device or through accessories. An example of this is how the sale of each Xbox 360 gaming console actually costs Microsoft roughly $126 (Joystiq, 2010), Microsoft then makes its money through video game and accessory sales.

Therefore this thought of ‘obsolete devices’ is actually quite outdated as the new trend is companies aiming at having the devices they produce to stay in the consumers possession for longer periods of time and then make their money through delivering innovative content through these devices.

REFERENCES:

Serving History, 2010, ‘Media Convergence: Black Box Fallacy’, accessed: 10/09/2010

http://www.servinghistory.com/topics/media_convergence::sub::Black_Box_Fallacy

Apple Insider, 2007, ‘Apple may see 50% margin on each iPhone sale’, accessed: 10/08/2010 http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/01/18/apple_may_see_50_percent_margin_on_each_iphone_sale.html

Joystiq, 2010, ‘Xbox 360 costs $715 to make’, accessed: 10/08/2010, http://www.joystiq.com/2005/12/28/xbox-360-costs-715-to-make/