My apologies if this post is construed as not relevant, PTB being primarily for the Pinoy tech intelligentsia. But the latest Forrester paper discussing the relationship between young consumers (US) and technology was too good to pass up. Let’s investigate how different (or similar) our own 12 to 21-year old set is from their US and Canadian counterparts.
Young consumers love consumer electronics.
More than two-thirds own PCs, DVD players, home stereos, game consoles, mobile phones, and handheld videogames. Portable MP3 players and browser- or camera-enabled mobile phones have caught on with the younger set, with adoption around one-quarter and growing: MP3 players rank first in young consumers’ wish list, and camera-phones rank third.
For the young, upwardly mobile Pinoy, these gadgets are staples. A typical 15-year old from one of the posh villages in the metro will have these items in their own room. And you thought you were cool back then with your Nintendo Family Computer.
Good news for the young ones. Bad news for their parents 🙂
Young consumers look to the Web for entertainment.
Music, movies, and gaming content scores big with young consumers on the Net. Teens spend, on average, 11 hours per week surfing the Web.
Still not yet as strong a medium as TV, but with more and more households getting wired, the shift to the Web as an entertainment source is definitely underway. You don’t see it quite often, but forward-thinking local producers have begun to add Web, SMS and other non-traditional mediums into their marketing mix. That’s testament to the Web’s power.
Not everyone can enjoy this privilege, and that’s fine. Most of the gadgets I mentioned above don’t really contribute to improving the lives of the majority of young Filipinos. In fact, I think they’re distractions to the development of more important items like critical thinking, entrepreneurial skills, etc. The one exception which can only have a positive effect on the lives of generation next is having access to the Internet.
Forget MP3 players, free Internet access for everyone! 🙂
See the other survey points at the Forrester site.
2 comments
The flood of consumer technology notwithstanding (I think $500 graphics cards and $400 gaming consoles are ridiculous), I strongly feel that the only direction to go is forward, and with enough common sense the use of advanced technology is an enabler that will give the average kid an edge. Efforts should be made to make the Internet more accessible to evryone, though – even though connectivity elsewhere is cheap, such is not the case here. Hopefully the trend towards “tech” proves beneficial for everyone!