High-tech today, dustbin tomorrow

Just like the VCRs and Sony Walkmans of old, many gadgets considered to be at the cutting edge in the not-too-distant past are destined for the scrap heap. With gallery.

Devices such as iPods, above, television sets and games consoles are headed to the technology scrap heap. Jeff Chiu / AP Photo

Welcome to technology's junkyard. Film cameras, fax machines, VCRs and the Sony Walkmans are all examples of once-popular products that are now obsolete.

Many of today's must-have tech items are also heading for the scrap heap.

The long and growing list of soon-to-be-redundant products includes portable items such as standalone e-readers, satellite navigation devices, iPod-type music players and other trendy devices. Also destined for the rubbish tip of history are today's televisions and games consoles.

The unprecedented pace of change in the electronics industry means that the functions performed today by some of these devices are being incorporated into other products such as smartphones.

Portable digital music players such as Apple's iPod are facing extinction as mobile makers routinely bundle digital music players into their devices. Smartphone manufacturers such as the BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) and Samsung have also incorporated location and guidance services based on the global position system (GPS).

"The devices that will disappear are those that do not adopt multiple uses," says James McQuivey, an analyst at the research company Forrester.

"Certainly, standalone GPS devices will not be as necessary in the future because all phones will have that basic functionality."

Already, many high-end smartphones with built-in GPS chips and internet connections can offer the same satellite navigation map-reading services as traditional satellite navigation devices.

Smartphones developed by Apple, and other smartphones using Google's Android software, allow new applications such as location-based map reading to be sent over the airwaves. There is, therefore, little reason for today's shoppers to buy satellite devices.

"Navigation was a market, now it is an app, and often a free app," says Tim Shepherd, an analyst at the research company Canalys.

The digital revolution in photography means that manufacturers can bundle excellent still and video cameras into pocket-size smartphones.

"Point-and-click digital cameras made photography easy and affordable," Mr Shepherd says. "But now smartphones almost invariably come with a credible digital camera built in, often capable of producing better images than low-end cameras."

There are also growing fears that the next casualty of the trend towards incorporating multiple technologies into a single device could be the big seller last Christmas, the e-reader.

Again, smartphones and tablet computers already incorporate e-readers and wireless electronic book delivery. But at the moment these are still inferior to dedicated e-readers such as the Amazon Kindle. In the next few years, that will probably change.

"The biggest question mark is e-readers," Mr McQuivey says. "Book reading is perhaps the one thing left in our modern world that is still best done in a dedicated, focused environment.

"Carrying around an iPad to read a book doesn't make sense - half of iPad owners don't read books on them. But having a very small, very cheap, and long-lasting Kindle or Nook does."

However, Mr McQuivey offers words of caution. "Once colour-reading tablets are as small and cheap as e-readers - something that will surely happen before 2015 - then e-readers will begin to disappear."

Yet it is not only personal devices such as standalone digital music players, satellite devices, low-end digital cameras and e-readers that now face extinction. Devices such as DVD players, games consoles and traditional TV sets are also being consigned to the junkyard.

Gaming consoles will evolve into entertainment and communications devices as well as being incorporated into a new generation of digital TVs.

The DVD players that replaced old-fashioned video recorders will, during the next few years, also be replaced by set-top boxes with the capacity to record programmes and movies on devices such as memory sticks.

"DVD recorders are a lifeless category of product because they are clearly not the best at what they do," Mr McQuivey says.

But some of the companies selling soon-to-be obsolete products still have an opportunity to avoid the fate of the camera manufacturer Kodak, which has been forced to file for bankruptcy protection. They must, however, act quickly and try to incorporate their products and services into new technologies such as the digital dashboard.

"Certainly, some device categories such as low-cost digital cameras and DVD players are challenged by the adjacent threat of smartphones and the shift to web-delivered media," says Adrian Drury, an analyst at the research company Ovum. "But the real challenges for businesses in these markets is to diversify.

"Companies must find new strategies and be sufficiently prescient to do it before they find their supply of free cash flow switched off."

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