Portable Digital Devices Get A Home
By Steve Smith -- TWICE, 5/22/2006
It has often been said that when it comes to change, a year in the consumer electronics industry is probably like two or three years compared with any other industry.
If you are responsible for publishing and editing TWICE, this means you'd better be adaptable. Over the years we have been, changing the sections of TWICE to reflect what is going on in the business and creating our Web site www.TWICE.com and our e-newsletter to provide daily and weekly news updates, among other changes.
This issue marks another such change, the debut of the Portable Digital Devices section on p. 34. This new section will cover the following: MP3 and iPod, cellphones of all types, portable satellite radio devices, portable media players, some portable navigation systems and portable game systems. Content, as it applies to these handheld devices, will also be covered in this new section.
As you can see by the list of product categories, they have all been covered in several sections of the paper over the years. Now they have a home. They share that home because of common traits: portability and the ability of these devices to download content of all types via the Web, satellite or TV.
And these products need a home. While the iPod phenomenon has been with us for a couple of years, content providers wanted to stay ahead of the curve this time. According to consumer media coverage of International CES back in January, you would have thought the show was all about handheld devices and video content offerings for a fee from all the major TV broadcast networks, Google, Yahoo!, MSN and a variety of other sources.
The content guys always make money from new technology. But will CE manufacturers and retailers make a few bucks? That issue, and plenty more, will be explained and explored in each issue of TWICE and on the Web from now on by senior editors Joe Palenchar and Amy Gilroy, with contributions from executive editor Greg Tarr, among others.
And they will have plenty to delve into based on the first section's coverage. Take a look at Palenchar's analysis of the portable media player (PMP) market for this year on p. 1 and the chart on p. 36 that shows where you can legally download content to your PMP.
Other changes are also part of the debut of the Portable Digital Devices section. Mobile Electronics, which has become a term that has become more identified with portable communication and computing, has been renamed Car Electronics to clearly identify it with the vehicle A/V products covered in it.
Custom Networking (p. 54) and Communications (p. 50) will now appear in every other issue. Communications will now center on home telephony in all its varieties and be edited by contributing editor Greg Scoblete. The Home Audio and Digital Imaging sections will alternate with these two sections and appear again in the June 5 issue of TWICE. And, of course, all four of these categories will continue to be covered by www.TWICE.com on a daily basis as news develops.
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