Tuesday May 31, 2011 - Greg Scoblete
In most years, the consumer electronics replacement cycle is driven by incremental improvements. More megapixels here, larger displays there. Occasionally this cycle is punctuated by a bona-fide breakthrough that transforms the market: what the iPod did for portable music, the Flip did for camcorders, the iPad did for tablet computers or what high definition did for the television market. It was clear that consumer electronics manufacturers were hoping for a similar breakout for 3D HDTV - a breakout that, to date at least, just hasn't materialized.
One need only walk the floor at the CES and NAB shows to understand that 3D HDTV hasn't lived up to the considerable hype surrounding it. At CES, vendors spent half as much time explaining why 3D HDTV hadn't failed than boasting about the technology itself - and if you have to explain to people why a product isn't a failure, it's probably a failure. At NAB, exhibitors without a huge monetary stake in the outcome didn't think much of 3D video. Broadcasters were leery of the expense and technological hurdles associated with 3D in light of a perceived lack of consumer enthusiasm.
There is no shortage of reasons for 3D's flat reception: there's the glasses of course. No one likes to wear them, especially heavy ones and most especially heavy expensive ones that need a battery. Not everyone can even properly view 3D images, some people (like yours truly) get motion sickness in the process and there are evenconcerns that 3D viewing can impair children's depth perception. If ever there was a kiss of death, it's stoking parental fears about product safety. And, as DTC's own Stewart Wolpin documented, retailers haven't exactly done a bang-up job selling 3D either.
But I think there's something else at work. I think consumers caught wind of the game. Consumers understand the replacement cycle, whereby electronics manufacturers quickly set about making new products "obsolete" by piling on new features in an effort to entice consumers to fork over more money. Heck, Best Buy even poked fun of it in a recent ad campaign. But it's one thing to have new technology eclipsed by better technology. It's quite another to have something of dubious benefit paraded before your eyes as the Next Big Thing. Consumers may be willingly led along with incremental feature enhancements, but they don't want to feel like marks.
That's not to say 3D HDTV market has already failed. In fact, it appears that 3D capability is going to be incorporated into an ever-larger assortment of TVs - whether consumers want it or not. The adoption curve, therefore, will grow. Think of it as an update to Henry Ford's famous maxim about customers having any color car they like so long as it's black. The 21st century edition: you can have any TV you like, so long as it's 3D.
