The State of the “Connected Consumer”

Lately “Connected Ecosystem” has been “the buzzword” and has quickly become “the core element” of long-term strategy for major internet, mobile and technology companies. In my previous post on these visionaries and tech giants racing it out to become the top notch “Ecosystem player”, have been putting in large scale efforts to acquire every consumer’s eyeballs across multiple screens and create a tribe where they can further cross sell content, services and generate extra $$$ by bombarding adverts.

The above seems to be a clear “supply-side” push but lets face the reality and paint the “demand side” picture; My first question to the consumers would be:

Are you ready to connect your own world and commit your 100% attention and effort in building a world to seamlessly manoeuvre across screens. I know some of the geeks or early adopters like me are already evaluating which tribe to be part of and dream of a connected world and work towards building it. However, innovations are not consistent across segments and across these players, for example: while one tech giant is ahead in one category or segment other player is ahead in different segment, which makes our life difficult as consumers to quickly choose a tribe. From consumer point of view, if today I am an early adopter in “smartphone segment” and mesmerized by Apple’s offering then, at the same time I may be a late majority in “smart TV” segment and though mesmerized with Sony’s Smart TV, which is avery important indicator these players have to consider in mapping their innovation cycles so they are consistent across segments and maps well with the consumers innovation adoption cycles.

Secondly, everyone is no geek, those tech-savvy consumers who will open their wallet to these innovations represents a mere 16% of the total population and the behaviours vary across different families, communities, markets, regions and countries. So as the innovations keep on happening will everyone be the part of the “connected world”? Do everyone in the remaining 84% portion of the bell curve, firstly have “the need” or secondly possesses “the resources” (time, money,connectivity, etc) to tie up these screens? No !! Majority of us fall in these anomalies which is the second indicator for innovators that the potential TAM (Total Addressable Market) is limited for now.

So what this means for the innovators and tech companies?

• Challenges in terms of crossing the chasms of innovations and timely product rollouts across different segments (screens), different consumer innovation adoption cycles for a consistent and seamless experience, without mismatch across segments (ex: smartphone ; Android 2.2 & Set-Top Box is Android 3.1 and Tablet is Android 4.0).
• All consumers won’t be ready (emotionally or resourcefully) for entering a connected world and these tech innovators will have to “create demand” and educate the attached benefits with innovative marketing and promotions and thus work continuously towards increasing the “Connected TAM”

In summary, the “connected consumer” TAM is still very small, fragmented and full with adoption of inconsistent solutions. Henceforth, innovators and tech giants in this ecosystem race has to live with this truth and work hard to align their future innovations to be consistent while understanding and mapping the innovations with the needs, behaviour, wallet-size, etc of these future “connected consumer” in order to be successful or even a leader..