The Tangara is an interesting look into the shapes demand takes. In a world where there are only a few select manufacturers providing basically all of the options, how do they know what customers want if customers literally cannot vote with their dollar? The unfortunate reality of the modern world is that most people will trade the slight inconvenience of a phone they don’t really like for the MASSIVE inconvenience of not having a phone with app capability. The same goes for most tech – you need a Windows or Mac computer to run your program, so you have one. You don’t have a Linux computer, or if you do, it’s a personal device. Your headphones are weighted towards bass by default, and so are your BlueTooth speakers. Big companies do what works for them, and anyone who wants something else is forced into conformity.
If you want to catch a bus, realize you forgot your metro card, and instead have the phone app, no big deal. No phone app? You better have cash. No cash, or the bus wants exact change only? Guess you’re walking. Some companies take it even further and make the app the only way to interact with the service being purchased. TicketMaster, for example, wants you to download an app and then download your tickets. It’s actually very difficult to get around this.
Thus, everyone buys a phone, or the first speaker they see that fits the price point they want, and they don’t wait until one they really want comes onto the market. The iPod was a delight, but it’s gone – now, in it’s place, are dozens and dozens of third-party mp3 players that fill the void, but Apple won’t allow to sync the Apple library with because it’s not an Apple product so it can’t play Apple’s proprietary music files (which it uses for exactly this reason – you’re locked to your Apple library because you can’t move it!).
The want for product is gone, replaced by a need for it. Do people still want iPods? The answer was clearly yes, but Apple stopped making them in favor of the phone acting as an MP3 player, one that’s always connected to the internet. Do people wish they could choose to either print a ticket or use their phone wallet? Yes, but since you’re more likely to browse the app if you have the app, it’s most profitable for Ticketmaster to insist only one method is possible and railroad people into that.
Phones with folding touchscreens are another strange example of something springing up despite an assumed lack of demand. People use phone protectors when they want to keep their screen from being scratched, and they’re more or less used to the enormous size of most smartphones by now. So a folding phone was briefly seen as a goof, a fringe product launched to draw attention to the mainline, before people actually started buying it, and now other companies also want to make folding smartphones. What could we have, what new and creative devices could we be making, if only the need for some products didn’t outweigh the want for everything else?
