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Depends how you define "fastest". In this case it's "percentage of households after 7 years". I think if we shortened the definition (arbitrarily) to 1 year we
by Jabbles 15y ago
Depends how you define "fastest". In this case it's "percentage of households after 7 years". I think if we shortened the definition (arbitrarily) to 1 year we would get very different results (yet keep the same headline).
- zalew 15y agoIn 1 year it would be probably just the cheapest one, new stuff is usually quite expensive. 7 years is enough to become an affordable comodity.
- cperciva 15y agoAlso, it's 7 years after first introduction to market. There are lots of products which spent a long time going nowhere and then suddenly exploded once they became sufficiently refined.
- pawosty 15y agoSuch as the iPod? Or are you thinking of a different example? Actually I might be way off with the iPod...
- cperciva 15y agoThe first example which came to mind was the internet. After that, smart phones.
- excuse-me 15y agoThe internet came on the market in 1982, 7 years later it was still pretty much only in universities. If you count 1992 - when com connection was really allowed and the web was invented it probably still wasn't in all that many homes 7 years later. 1999 was still dial-up for me and I was a Caltech grad student!
- obtu 15y agoNo, the graph shows markets for entire product categories. Individual products might have faster initial growth (because previous iterations for that market would be ignored), on the other hand they are fast to be discontinued.
- ben1040 15y agoActually I might be way off with the iPod... Naw, you're pretty much spot on. It took a few refinements to get traction, and that all happened about two years after it launched. The 3rd gen iPod came out in early 2003, and was the first one with USB support and the familiar dock connector that we all take for granted today. At the same time the iTunes Music Store launched as well. Then in fall 2003 Apple released iTunes for Windows. That and USB support means millions of potential customers who couldn't have used an iPod otherwise before. Then, checkmate: they brought out the iPod Mini in 2004. Not only did it look cool, it was priced at a point where all sorts other folks could get in, and they could finally use it on their Windows PCs.
- _delirium 15y agoColor television would be my pick for that category. If you go by time of first commercial introduction, it had no uptake really: it came out in 1953, but expensive units with little programming available sold poorly in the 1950s. But once it started catching on around 1965, the transition was really fast, with nearly everyone having one by 1970. If you went by 7-year period with the biggest percentage delta, I think it would be in the running.
- dfrey 15y agoThe iPod doesn't really count because it's a portable digital media player, not a product category on it's own. The first portable digital media players hit the market in 1997, but the first iPod reached the market in 2001.
- donw 15y agoThat was my thought -- the personal computer and mobile phone have definitely outsold the boombox over the span of the last fifty years, but it took both technologies about two decades to mature to the point where they were a fit for the mass market. A better title for this article would be 'Which new gadget had the fastest uptake during the past fifty years?'