Is The 6-Month Product Cycle Upon Us?

Mark Goldstein writes "What is perhaps more interesting than the 4 new Konica Minolta cameras announced today is the rapid product cycle that seems to have been established by both Konica Minolta and other manufacturers." Rather than the yearly model updates that people have come to expect, the article notes that three members of this batch aren't even a year old, and one is only six months.

Six month death spiral

[solarmist]

Yeah, sure. The picture quality'll go up, but the overall quality go down, just like video games, or processors, or....

All show and no substance...

I mean that's what seems to be happening with these rapid production cycles; they concentrate so much on improving one aspect that the entire product suffers, or at least starts to suffer, from it.

And let's not forget our favorite one, Microsoft; Although I'm sure this is not the main reason M$ sucks... *Insert M$ bashing here* *and here*

*and here*

*and a little more here...*

Whats next?

[jj_johny]

Can the six month job cycle be far behind?

So What?

[I_Love_Pocky!]

I think it is great to put out new products when ever they are ready. I don't feel compeled to always have the newest model, because I know that even with a 1 year product cycle, I will always end up the loser (money-wise) that way.

The six month turn around just means that when I do need to buy a product it is more likely that it will be a time of year when I will be buying a realitively new product.

I think this is a good thing (unless this turns out to be too little time for testing).

Good for business

[ePhil_One]

Since most of these updates are minor tweaks, rapid product cycles help remove that sales lag that hits about 9 months after a product is released; I dont want to buy now becaus enext years model is due soon.

Of course, this plays havoc with review readers, since by the time a product is reviewed, a new batch of products is out...

Only for some.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why I hate cell phones.

I just want a phone, I don't want to pay for new features I don't need in a new phone in 6 months after my current phone falls apart because they made a piece of crap.

Upon us?

[Alizarin Erythrosin]

It has been for a while then. Unless nobody seem to notice that the video card market has been in a 6 month product cycle for a long time now.

I don't recall ever having yearly product cycles

[Tet]

Rather than the yearly model updates that people have come to expect

Have we? I'm more surprised that anyone expected model updates once a year. I expect them whenever the manufacturer believes that bringing out a new model is economically viable. I certainly don't see a new model 6 months after the last one as being particularly noteworthy.

Is this just an American thing? I mean, the rest of the world has never had things like cars being different from one year to the next, yet in the US, you seem to have a new version of each car model each year, being arbitrarily different to the last, apparently just for the sake of being different and new for that particular year.

cellphones too?

[bircho]

i don't know about you guys, but my old motorola brick was less laggy and had better sound (i know... digital is better) than my brand new siemens.

they are not caring about quality anymore.

It's the market, silly

[heironymouscoward]

Markets that are in periods of rapid change obviously have rapid product cycles. When the race to the bottom is finished, and the winners have divided up the market, the product cycle will slow down again.

There are still too many camera manufacturers and the costs are still too high. The market will slow down when the cost per camera has come down to around $20 and the functionality is more than the average consumer wants. There will always be a market for premium products but this is not what is driving the current cycle: it's the mass market.

Standard technology curve... aka Heironymous' Law.

Faster != better

[supercytro]

The problem is that shorter release cycles are not necessarily better for the consumers. For the average consumer, it's hard enough to choose a brand amongst the myriad models out there. Then the buyer can look forward to having their model devalued with a new upgrade.

The manufacturers, will also lose out as they end up haemmoraging their own profits by reducing the return on research investments as well as losing the opportunity to build up a brand like Apple did with their iPod.

Re:Kinda like JBuilder

[Timesprout]

This pattern put a lot of people off JBuilder and Borland products in general. In the long run its probably done them more harm than good.

This is an advertisement

[Sheepdot]

So, how much did Konica Minolta pay for this ad? I mean, if you analyze the actual content, there's NOTHING to this that would signify this post is a "story" or even remotely newsworthy.

Welcome to Slashdot, where we debate the commonplace if we can't find a better way to work in an advertisement.

Dogbert

[mfh]

Seems they finally figured out Dogbert's release system. In order to make more money, you need to make more products, and release them more frequently. Also it doesn't account for any crappiness in the product, just that more of any given line will produce more revenue to the company.

Bad for quality, great for the corporate stocks!

Re:I don't recall ever having yearly product cycle

[Anonymous Coward]

"I mean, the rest of the world has never had things like cars being different from one year to the next"

Puhleaaase!

How about Japan? How about Europe? How about the freakin' rest of the world!

Faster != Better

[holy_smoke]

Marketing folks don't understand that though. To them, faster product cycles = quicker access to profits and market advantage.

To engineering it means rushed deveopment schedules, hurried design, tooling, testing, and release to production.

Its a delicate scale. Push it too far towards marketing and you risk significant quality problems. Push it too far toward engineering and you miss your market window.

Down to the power of IT

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

This reminds me of something I read about digital cameras once. Apparently the product cycle for digital cameras is so rapid that one camera, by the time it was awarded camera of the year, was already out of production.

I suppose with PC assistence, designing and building just about anything has become easier. It used to take forever for ideas and techniques to spread. Nowadays if your stuck at anything, you can google for the answer. Applies more to software design, but at least it's easier for designers to find components now. Didn't it take only 6 months for the iPod designers complete the design from the outside in, using off the shelf parts. That would have been a lot harder if they didn't have the net and emails I'd wager.

Re:So What?

[Last_Available_Usern]

How about this...lets say Company X has developed 10 new innovations for their camera line which is currently 6 months old. To edge out Company Y, they only need to utilize 6 of those innovations. With such short product cycles, they are likely to pockets whatever they can and save it for the next round. Much like a game of spades...you're not going to trump a 3 of hearts with an ace of spades if the 3 of spades will do the same job. With longer product cycles, they would be likely to release everything they can possibly come up with, along with trying even harder to innovate since they'll need that product to stay "lively" for a much longer period.

Re:Upon us?

[Biogenesis]

Which is why I haven't bought one for about 5 years.

Personally I want my purchases to *last*, I don't care if a "better" product is available the fact remains that when I bought something it did what I expected and required it to do and a year later it should still do it, hopefully for much longer.

I really dislike the way the entire technology arena is going, I am only 19 and already I see far too much "progress" for comfort. I look at my dad who has been able to keep the same job for 19 years and I know that I simply won't be able to do that.

But in all this change, I think we should all remember Ecclesiastes 7:10:
Do not say, "Why were the old days better than these?" For it is not wise to ask such questions.

People longed for the past 5000odd years ago and they still do it today, humans all share an odd similarity.

I sorta strayed a bit there...Aw well.

Re:Microsoft et al.

[Timesprout]

For the vast majority of people incremental releases are a pain in the ass. I dont want to install an application that has partial or buggy implementation and have to continually install newer versions to get over these issues. Release early/often might work for a limited developer audience but for a mass market I think people will just say if you cant do it properly first time then dont bother.

Re:Good for business

[jj_johny]

There is a big downside of such rapid product changes. It takes a fair amount of time to stock the sales channel. This means that before you see the latest digital camera on the shelf at the local camera store, it has to go through a three or four hands. This means that a product that is going to be replaced in six months spends the first month or more not available to people. Also, when a new product is introduced all the existing products that are in stock go down in value. If you are running a retail store, you can easily get stuck with product that is obsolete but can't be sold for cost. This is what caused the big computer retails to have so much of a problem when they were reluctant to mark down old product. This was especially true in the height of video card wars.

2 big areas that suffer

[millahtime]

There are 2 big areas that suffer in this faster life cycle.

1) Reliability - products will be more prone to fail. But, I guess this just forces you to go out and get a new one. Kind of like how many cars are now "disposable". You have them for a couple years and dispose of them to get new ones.
2) Quality - They aren't the quality products they used to be. They sure don't build them like they used to.

It's All About Creating Artificial Demand

[Anonymous Coward]

This is yet another method in a long string of concocted schemes to stimulate artificial demand. Do we need a new car every year? Of course not but if we tweak the headlight to point in a different direction we can pawn it off as something new and improved and play to the elementary school insecurities of the American consumer and the need to have to have the latest fashion trend so as to be ahead of the Jones'. Look at the durable goods industry, appliances used to have a generic shape and would last consumers decades, now they are purposely designed with color patterns and quickly dating exterior body kit panels so that they can be disposable products in a couple of years when they break down or become rapidly dating fashion faux pas displaced by the next color change and bodykit panels.

Re:So What?

[Azrael Newtype]

So, a six month turn around is equivalent to making sure devices are destroyed every six months via internal bomb/bios coding to shut down/*insert other paranoid ranting*? I don't know how they could force me to buy a new anything really. I, for one, still have a 5 year old cell phone, a 4 year old digital camera, and a 10 year old car, all of which have fast turn around rates. All of them work as well as I need, so how am I being forced to upgrade? It could be said that they aren't working properly, but really, cell phone companies are about the worst for pushing out new products for no reason and trying to make old products seem inferior.

Re:6 month life cycle...good or bad?

[swb]

of course, the flip side to this, is that you have to be satisfied with a camera that is "out of date"..

The major bad thing about this is that the more rapid the product cycle, the crappier the firmware or supporting desktop software is, making us more and more dependent on frequent and numerous software updates to get relatively bug-free operation.

With ultra-fast product cycles, we're looking at software obsolence and product abandonment far faster than we otherwise would have. The device may still work, but have critical bugs/problems/issues that aren't resolved without buying the next item in the product cycle.

It's obviously something less of an issue with devices that have a non-proprietary data interface (eg, memory cards), but something like the iPod really needs its proprietary software to function as designed. But it's still a critical issue regardless if the firmware inside the device doesn't work right.

I love updatable firmware, I hate the fact that it's become an excuse for manufacturers to release broken products and sometimes fix them as they go.

Re:6 month life cycle...good or bad?

[oolon]

Currently there is a camera revolution going on so it is natural to expect to have alot of choice and new models. If you want to look at a mature market look at the VCR one, there is very little choice in the highstreet all are almost idendical, and the price is very low. I expect you will see the cameras that Minolta is removing are not well placed in the market, so they have taken the decision to replace a model that is only 6 months old with one that will perform better in the market, sound sensible to me! Considering the current size of the market and the lose of market share if they don't do this. I don't expect we will see a 6 months cycle, however to do expect to see poorly performing (in sales) cameras to be quickly replaced and better selling ones to be more slowly replaced.

All this will continue while the market is red hot (which is great for the customer). When it slows down the choice will not be so good but atleast everything will be cheap!

James

Konica Minolta merger

[mrm677]

Konica-Minolta recently merged and before, Minolta was behind in the digital game. It is likely that they had a lot of R&D going on, but due to the merger, things were unclear and it took time to get things settled and to get products out the door (with the new name).

Re:Oh no... what will we do?

[hcdejong]

Bad example. If ever there was a product that needed improvement during its life cycle, it was the Beetle. How VW managed to avoid doing that, still baffles me.

Lets face it

[arieswind]

Lets face it, the average consumer does not have the time or money to rush out and buy the new model every 6 months... I know that I for one dont replace my electronics until they break, or become very inconvinient to use, and I think most technology consumers are more that way than some tech obsessed people who replace everything they own the second something new comes out

the perfect product

[wisdom_brewing]

its all marketing, they can release exactly the same product (and i mean identical) except for model number and people will buy it for more instead of the older version... its an old idea, where someone designs a perfect (literally) product, they still need to make the standard version worse, release some inferior and better versions but keep headroom above to keep releasing updates, if they release the product as a perfect one therell be a rush to buy it, but then once half your friends have it you dont want it anymore because you want to have something different... anyway...

One way it is bad for the consumer

[brunes69]

Whenever you shorten a product development cycle, you always cut into QA and testing time. Shorter development cycles will inevitably lead to lower quality for the consumer over the long run.

Now, whether this lower quality will even be noticeable, or whether it is a valid tradeoff for increased functionality, is yet to be seen.

Re:Microsoft et al.

[SlamMan]

Because product testing takes time. Good testing takes lots of time. The cost of the testing, and time involved, has very little to do with what new features were added or changed, os it works out far better for people who test their products, if they have releases less often.

Re:Upon us?

[nelsonal]

I think Ecclesiastes probably has a lot of good advice for modern folk, after all the guy writing it was desparate after gaining everything the world had to offer (wealth, women, wisdom, power) and none of them made him happy after a short honeymoon period. I'd guess that many Americans are getting to that point or will be there in a few years. I've always thought the saddest people in the world are like Paris Hilton. Unlike those of us who can dream that being wealthy, popular, or beautiful would make us happy; they know that they do not and have little left to look forward to.

Re:6 month life cycle...good or bad?

[Biogenesis]

I like the way you've taken the opposite side to a lot of other people but even among your valid arguments I'd still rather just buy a product and have it last a long time. If it did what I bought it to do the day I bought it why shoulden't it do it in 1, 5 or even 10 years time. I know that in 1994 you could get a 486 machine for word processing and if you could still easily get printer cartriges for printers made in 1994 I'm sure it would still be quite a usefull machine, but do you still see people using equipment that old? I find it a sad fact that you don't and an environmental hazard to boot with all the wasted recources going into products that will be landfill in 2 or 3 years.

I know that I will always be one to laugh when I see a 4 year old fridge thrown out and a 40 year old fridge continue to cool like it was brand new. Even if it is only used to cool beer at some summer beachhouse I admire the fact that it was built to last. Imagine how satisfying it would be knowing that the camera you bought today was powered off a plutonium heat cell and would last as well as the Voyager probe [nasa.gov].

Re:Lets face it

[mqx]

"the average consumer does not have the time or money to rush out and buy the new model every 6 months"

It's not just about the "continual upgrade cycle", which I have seen people get trapped into (always needing the latest model ...); but it's also about the new adopters who want to buy a product, and they are either going to buy state of the art from Company X, or Company Y - meaning that unless both X and Y continue to keep pace and outdo each other, they'll fall behind in the market.

I think the pace in this market is also about the component supply side: IC and other manufacturers are also on rapid release cycles, and they're driving the input chains to the equipment manufacturers. The components are not always radical either, e.g. 2mpixel to 3mpixel IC upgrade, which means that incremental revision of products is actually quite easy, it's not like a 12 month development cycle for completely new product, it's largely regression. And if you as Company X offer 3mp at the same pricepoint as Company Y 2mp, then consumers are not going to care too much and they'll move to X.

Don't forget that many consumers don't upgrade every 6 months, they might upgrade every 2 or 3 years - and each time they do, then you as a the manufacturer want to capture them when they are in that window.

Re:6 month life cycle...good or bad?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I call it bad for the consumer. It is harder to keep track of what is good. Six months is not enough time for a product to gather a reputation, good or bad. When I'm new to a particular product, I generally look around for site reviews and user impressions.

That said, the auto industry isn't above having mid-year updates and mid-year introductions, they just don't do it often.

I don't think the computer necessarily benefitted from model year-itis, because products stick around for a good while after introduction and aren't removed from the market when a faster version is put out. They just don't hold themselves to introducing a new product at a specific time every year.

Re:dammit

[Biogenesis]

True, but at least you don't have to pay for kernel upgrades.

Re:Six month death spiral

[kingLatency]

Actually, the picture quality won't go up. The current trend has been to increase the resolution of the low-end cameras while keeping too-small sensors in them. This reduces the image quality, but increases marketablitiy. Also, manufacturers increase their still cameras' video capabilities, things like 640x480 videos. It's completely pointless. Unfortunately, this doesn't lead to a better product. As prices for larger CCDs drop, then we might see some improvement.

Re:It's All About Creating Artificial Demand

[danila]

Bullshit. Nobody expects consumers to buy a new product every year. But consumers do expect producers not to sit on their asses for the whole year, but come up with something original instead. Especially in a rapidly developing industry. I may be perfectly content with my 4 year old PDA, mobile phone or camera, but if I decide to upgrade tomorrow, I don't want to buy a 2002 or a 2003 model (unless I am being cheap), I want to buy a 2004 model, which is faster, bigger, better has more features and is generally more badass.

If a particular manufacturer decides that once every 3 years is enough, it will not sell anything for the 70% of the time, because everyone will buy updated models from the competitors instead.

Re:2 big areas that suffer

[Moofie]

Things are also a lot cheaper (in real dollars) than they used to be.

There were no good old days.

Re:Microsoft et al.

[HerbieStone]

What kind of updates would you sell? I guess there are some types of updates possible:

- Security updates. Microsoft provides them for free. Don't see how they could sell them.
- Data updates. Like with AVirus software. Updates to virus signatures. MS could sell a subscription to Powerpoint-Clipart Galleries with regular updates or new Fonts... well, that's what I can think right now
- Feature updates. That's what MS is trying to do with every major release. The Same with more features. People don't like the new office releases because of the feature-creep. I don't see how this would improve with small incremental updates.
Also MS tends to break backward compatibility to older Office version. People don't like that either.

I guess it's hard to sell software by subscription. Either you get some kind of data updates.
OTOH maybe they could sell a service, like others do with RPG Games like Everquest and the like. I Guess MS allready tried this kind of business with Passport and other MSN stuff. Didn't work out too good for now.

Greets HerbieStone

Re:Only for some.

[Miphnik]

Question: what products -- especially "high-tech" products -- from a century ago would you want to use today on a regular basis, given the alternatives? Not their decendents, e.g., modern jet aircraft, hybrid power-plant automobiles, digital cameras, etc., but the ones actually built a century ago? I suspect the list will be a rather short one, including buildings, furniture, typewriters (multipart forms, you know) and artwork/antiques.

My point is, planned obsolesence or no, technology does continue to advance, and it makes very little sense to design some products to endure more than a few years in normal use. Those "well-built" analog cell phones from just a few years ago will be nice paperweights in another couple of years when the carriers start phasing out their analog service. [wirelessweek.com]

Re:2 big areas that suffer

[harkabeeparolyn]

3) With products churning this fast, your chance of reading a decent product review before making your purchase is close to zero. If stores like Best Buy are pissed off by customers returning products so often, look no further than practices like this. You never really know what you're buying because salespeople and manufacturers routinely lie or tell half-truths and you're left to find out the awful truth after you've made a purchase.

Re:2 big areas that suffer

[M1FCJ]

Probably you are living in the wrong country. A lot of WV Beetles from 70s are still running around in Europe. Ditto with Citroen 2CVs, Renault 5s, Fiat 131s (argh, I hate that car).

In UK, there are a lot of classic cars running around but the testing regime and the consumer society means that any car that's older than 9 years is completely worthless. I couldn't sell my Nissan (which was in perfect working order). I got my current car, a Volvo 940 for 450 pounds and probably I could have had it for much less.

Quite a lot of the 70's european automobiles are actually pretty high quality (unless it is British, they were rubbish).

Japan taught UK how to make a car reliable by importing Toyota.

Re:Only for some.

[the Luddite]

Doing things just because we can is not a good reason to do them. In fact, it is a very bad reason. Building things to be disposable is fine if you plan to do more than burry them in the ground when you throw them away. The problem is that all this 'stuff' that is build today is made of things that are expensive or out right not reusable. Someone sometime is going to the bill for the checks we are writing today and they are not going to be pleased when it happens. By designing things that can last now, we can help the people of the future. By designing things for our immediate gratification is akin to giving the finger to everyone who is yet to come. Rampant commercialism is one of the biggest threats today to our world as a whole.

Re:6 month life cycle...good or bad?

[Chanc_Gorkon]

Or not fix them at all. Toshiba with their e740 may have just used a cheaper rom chip then a flashable chip as they neever released mroe then one firmware update and it still did not fix critical issues with the device. Then Microsoft released Windows Mobile 2003 and they did not offer an upgrade for it.

Flash to just 6 months ago when they released the e805. It was and currently still is the only PDA with a 640x480 LCD. Microsoft released Windows Mobile 2003 SE. Toshiba followed up and released it for the e805 (WM 2003 SE adds VGA support to all of it's components)...in Germany. They have, to date, not released this to the US market and have pretty much did what Sony did, pull out of the market. CompUSA doesn't have any e805's and it's been discontinued.

The problem now is that everyoen is trying to be the next cellphone and I am sorry, but it just does not work with anything other then cellphones. You can always get a new phone every 2 years if your willing to sign another two year contract. Tmobile has gotten this down to a year. The cellphone market came out like this because of the way our providers pushed signing new contracts. Essentially, even if you are already a subscriber, you can rework your deal, and get a new phone every 1-2 years....THIS DOES NOT WORK on devices that the purchase price is not subsidised. This is probably why Sony and others pulled out of the market. In ths US, cellphones appear to be free every 2 years, but they really aren't free. How do youi subsidise something with out a recurring monthly bill? You can't.

In most of Asia, small devices are and always have been all the rage. IN Japan, they buy these devices voraciously. In the US, we want something to last so it just does not work to release a new one every 6 months that's only evolutionary. Sure, we'd buy it if it really wow's you, but the WOW moves from one camp to another (like from PocketPC to Palm and back and forth) and then stalls out for about 6 months to a year. American's get PO'd when the device we bout 8 months ago is all of a sudden NOT getting updates to fix problems. SO we bag that vendor and go to another then they do the same thing. The 6 month cycle is nice, but it just does not work in the American market too well.

Re:2 big areas that suffer

[virtual_mps]

Probably you are living in the wrong country. A lot of WV Beetles from 70s are still running around in Europe. Ditto with Citroen 2CVs, Renault 5s, Fiat 131s (argh, I hate that car).

There are a fair number of old cars running around the US also. I wish there were fewer. Driving behind a thirty year old beetle is a hellish experience filled with noxious fumes and headaches. Cars don't run as long anymore because they are more complicated. The number one reason they are more complicated is beacause of emission controls. These controls are a good thing, because they help make sure that our air is breathable.

Re:6 month life cycle...good or bad?

[virtual_mps]

I know that I will always be one to laugh when I see a 4 year old fridge thrown out and a 40 year old fridge continue to cool like it was brand new. Even if it is only used to cool beer at some summer beachhouse I admire the fact that it was built to last.

I always think it's a real shame when people keep old refrigerators around. Even putting aside the old death-trap fridges with the locking mechanisms that tend to kill children, the power consumption on old fridges is high enough to make the new models pay for themselves in energy savings.

You People MUST NOT be home owners

[superpulpsicle]

Have you folks ever tried looking at houses? Prices are thru the roof. Not to mention houses are built left and right, and the quality is far from great considering how fast and easy they are build nowadays. Especially here in MA. A $400,000 house will need a decent amount of repair. So many money pits, no other industry is as evil to American consumers.