As tech industry leaders gather for an annual extravaganza showcasing hot new products, political uncertainty is casting a cloud over the sector.
The election of Donald Trump and the Brexit referendum are among the factors weighing on the outlook. And a strong US dollar may cut into spending for many consumers around the world.
With the Consumer Electronics Show kicking off this week in Las Vegas, the organizers are predicting that industry revenue would shrink for the fourth consecutive year.
Consumer Technology Association senior director of market research Steve Koenig revealed the forecast Tuesday, predicting the amount of money people around the world spend on smartphones and other gadgets this year would tally $929 billion as compared to $950 billion in 2016.
Koenig said the "underpinning" of the global forecast was "uncertainty with the election of Trump and with Brexit."
It's the end of the world as we know it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 05 2017, @07:11AM
The article is about the decline of consumer tech spending, not economies. Several consecutive years of revenue decline tend to support the expert opinions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 05 2017, @07:17AM
All the cheap plastic crap I own right now does exactly what I want it to do. Am not planning to buy new crap unless something breaks. I spend most of my money on food these days.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday January 05 2017, @07:12PM
If my cheap plastic crap breaks, then there is duct tape. It's like the force. It has a dark side, a light side, and it binds the universe together.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday January 06 2017, @12:05AM
At least you managed to spell "force" correctly, unlike duck tape.
There's a reason "duct tape" isn't used on ducts: because it's not called "duct tape" at all, it's called "duck tape".
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday January 06 2017, @02:51AM
Huh? Duck tape is a brand of duct tape, "the handyman's secret weapon", "remember, if women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy"*
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duct_tape [wikipedia.org],
* Sayings of the ultimate duct tape user, Red Green. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Green_Show#Handyman_Corner [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday January 06 2017, @04:04PM
WTF are you talking about? Did you even read your own link???
The idea for what became duct tape came from Vesta Stoudt, an ordnance-factory worker and mother of two Navy sailors, who worried that problems with ammunition box seals would cost soldiers precious time in battle. She wrote to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1943 with the idea to seal the boxes with a fabric tape, which she had tested at her factory.[12] The letter was forwarded to the War Production Board, who put Johnson & Johnson on the job.[13] The Revolite division of Johnson & Johnson had made medical adhesive tapes from duck cloth from 1927 and a team headed by Revolite's Johnny Denoye and Johnson & Johnson's Bill Gross developed the new adhesive tape,[14] designed to be ripped by hand, not cut with scissors.
Their new unnamed product was made of thin cotton duck tape coated in waterproof polyethylene (plastic) with a layer of rubber-based gray adhesive ("Polycoat") bonded to one side.[7][15][16][17][18][19] It was easy to apply and remove, and was soon adapted to repair military equipment quickly, including vehicles and weapons.[15] This tape, colored in army-standard matte olive drab, was nicknamed "duck tape" by the soldiers.[20] Various theories have been put forward for the nickname, including the descendant relation to cotton duck fabric, the waterproof characteristics of a duck bird, and even the 1942 amphibious military vehicle DUKW which was pronounced "duck".[21]
Your own link proves me right: it was called "duck tape" in WWII where it was first used for ammunition boxes. It was later that morons changed the name to "duct tape" even though it's useless for ducts.
Her research does not show any use of the phrase "duck tape" in World War II
This is plainly contradicted by the very article it's written in, as quoted by me above ("was nicknamed 'duck tape' by the soldiers").
(Score: 2) by dry on Sunday January 08 2017, @03:40AM
The article also talks about scotch tape and masking tape as forerunners of duct tape. Duck tape was made from duck cloth and used to hold ducts together occasionally. The "cloth- or scrim-backed pressure-sensitive tape, often coated with polyethylene" tape was a different product, "tape products that were colored silvery gray like tin ductwork"
It appears that you're getting confused between an obsolete product that I'd never heard of in over half a century of using duct tape and the modern duct tape of which there is a brand of called duck tape, probably mostly only sold in a few countries. I think once I noticed a package of "duck" tape for sale in amongst all the various brands of duct tape.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday January 06 2017, @02:58PM
Although my spelling of "farce" was incorrectly, at least "duct" tape was suitably for my porpoises.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.