In this increasingly competitive world, companies are under more pressure to outdo each other with features that sometimes aren’t really worth the cash you fork out to buy them.
Crazy phone designs
Did you know that the cell phone accessory market is lead by phone covers? According to Allied Market Research, this market will be worth $107.3 billion by 2022, which effectively puts no point to minute design details. Due to the cost associated with smartphones, it would be rather silly not to protect it. Strangely though a lot of tech companies use the design of their phones as a valid reason to charge more.
‘Exclusive’ video game titles
Often Sony and Microsoft use exclusive titles to try sell their consoles. This is with the thinking that fans will only purchase the console for the game that they are interested in. However, as Microsoft did with Gears of War, there often is a PC or Linux version released shortly afterwards making the whole idea kind of pointless.
Massive Megapixel Cameras on Smartphones
Megapixel counts on smartphones only matter to a certain point. There is more to a great picture than the number of pixels it captures. Counts above 8 megapixels become redundant on smartphones where processing and optics matter much more. Anything above that means nothing to actual real-life picture taking.
Insane thinness
When tech was generally quite bulky, the thinness of new tech was important as it made it easier to carry and travel with. Tech companies took advantage of this opportunity and thinness largely drove marketing efforts, so much so that they are still trying to make devices thinner. To the consumer, however, we think the thinness of a device is no longer a deciding factor when purchasing it.
Crazy RAM
OnePlus, a Chinese smartphone manufacturer, released the OnePlus 5 last year and its number one selling point was 8GB of RAM which is more than most desktop PC’s at your office. Now as cool as that might be for the mini computer in your hand, it’s rather irrelevant for the kind of stuff we use are smartphones for. It’s unlikely you will be streaming Netflix, listening to music and playing a RAM intensive game such as Pokemon Go at the same time. Most smartphones today peak at 4GB of RAM and work just fine.
Connecting Everything
With connectivity becoming faster and better, the smart home market has flourished and will continue to do so. However this has led some manufacturers to create smart home devices that don’t necessarily need to be connected. There isn’t really a legitimate reason why a smart toilet should exist just yet.