154-752: A portable media player ( PMP ) or digital audio player ( DAP ) is a portable consumer electronics device capable of storing and playing digital media such as audio, images, and video files. The data is typically stored on a compact disc (CD), Digital Versatile Disc (DVD), Blu-ray Disc (BD), flash memory , microdrive , SD cards or hard disk drive ; most earlier PMPs used physical media, but modern players mostly use flash memory. In contrast, analogue portable audio players play music from non-digital media that use analogue media , such as cassette tapes or vinyl records . Digital audio players (DAP) were often marketed as MP3 players even if they also supported other file formats and media types. The PMP term
308-451: A boardroom coup and called an emergency meeting at which Apple's executive staff sided with Sculley and stripped Jobs of all operational duties. Jobs resigned from Apple in September 1985 and took several Apple employees with him to found NeXT . Wozniak had also quit his active employment at Apple earlier in 1985 to pursue other ventures, expressing his frustration with Apple's treatment of
462-515: A line-level audio signal (radio, voice, etc.). Devices such as CD players can be connected to the MP3 player (using the USB port) in order to directly play music from the memory of the player without the use of a computer. Modular MP3 keydrive players are composed of two detachable parts: the head (or reader/writer) and the body (the memory). They can be independently obtained and upgradable (one can change
616-611: A multi-touch iPod Nano , an iPod Touch with FaceTime , and an iPod Shuffle that brought back the clickwheel buttons of earlier generations. It also introduced the smaller, cheaper second-generation Apple TV which allowed the rental of movies and shows. On January 17, 2011, Jobs announced in an internal Apple memo that he would take another medical leave of absence for an indefinite period to allow him to focus on his health. Chief operating officer Tim Cook assumed Jobs's day-to-day operations at Apple, although Jobs would still remain "involved in major strategic decisions". Apple became
770-615: A personal organiser are emulated, or support for video games , like the iriver clix (through compatibility of Adobe Flash Lite ) or the PlayStation Portable , is included. Only mid-range to high-end players support "savestating" for power-off (i.e. leaves off song/video in progress similar to tape-based media). Nearly all players are compatible with the MP3 audio format, and many others support Windows Media Audio (WMA), Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) and WAV . Some players are compatible with open-source formats like Ogg Vorbis and
924-554: A radio frequency link while the user is moving within a telephone service area. The radio frequency link establishes a connection to the switching systems of a mobile phone operator , which provides access to the public switched telephone network (PSTN). Modern mobile telephone services use a cellular network architecture and, therefore, mobile telephones are called cellular telephones or cell phones in North America. In addition to telephony , digital mobile phones ( 2G ) support
1078-526: A $ 309 million profit. On May 6, 1998, Apple introduced a new all-in-one computer reminiscent of the original Macintosh: the iMac . The iMac was a huge success, with 800,000 units sold in its first five months, and ushered in major shifts in the industry by abandoning legacy technologies like the 3 + 1 ⁄ 2 -inch diskette , being an early adopter of the USB connector, and coming pre-installed with Internet connectivity (the "i" in iMac) via Ethernet and
1232-401: A US jury ruled that Samsung should pay Apple $ 1.05 billion (£665m) in damages in an intellectual property lawsuit. Samsung appealed the damages award, which was reduced by $ 450 million and further granted Samsung's request for a new trial. On November 10, 2012, Apple confirmed a global settlement that dismissed all existing lawsuits between Apple and HTC up to that date, in favor of
1386-486: A colour liquid crystal display (LCD) or organic light-emitting diode (OLED) screen is used as a display for PMPs that have a screen. Various players include the ability to record video, usually with the aid of optional accessories or cables, and audio, with a built-in microphone or from a line out cable or FM tuner . Some players include readers for memory cards , which are advertised to equip players with extra storage or transferring media. In some players, features of
1540-803: A communications protocol is a system of digital rules for data exchange within or between computers. The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) trade show has taken place yearly in Las Vegas , Nevada since its foundation in 1973. The event, which grew from having 100 exhibitors in its inaugural year to more than 4,500 exhibiting companies in its 2020 edition, features the latest in consumer electronics, speeches by industry experts and innovation awards. The IFA Berlin trade show has taken place in Berlin , Germany since its foundation in 1924. The event features new consumer electronics and speeches by industry pioneers. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE),
1694-831: A crossfade mixer. Many such devices also tend to be smartphones . Many mobile digital media players have last position memory , in which when it is powered off, a user does not have to worry about starting at the first track again, or even hearing repeats of others songs when a playlist, album, or whole library is cued for shuffle play , in which shuffle play is a common feature, too. Early playback devices to even remotely have "last position memory" that predated solid-state digital media playback devices were tape-based media, except this kind suffered from having to be "rewound", whereas disc-based media suffered from no native "last position memory", unless disc-players had their own last position memory. However, some models of solid-state flash memory (or hard drive ones with some moving parts) are somewhat
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#17328988800231848-477: A decade. In the 1990s, Apple lost considerable market share in the personal computer industry to the lower-priced Wintel duopoly of the Microsoft Windows operating system on Intel -powered PC clones . In 1997, Apple was weeks away from bankruptcy . To resolve its failed operating system strategy, it bought NeXT, effectively bringing Jobs back to the company, who guided Apple back to profitability over
2002-459: A decline in sales of PMPs, leading to most devices being phased out, such as the iPod Touch on May 10, 2022, though certain flagship devices like the Sony Walkman are still in production. Portable DVD and BD players are still manufactured. Digital audio players are generally categorised by storage media: Some MP3 players can encode directly to MP3 or other digital audio formats directly from
2156-403: A dial-up modem. Its striking teardrop shape and translucent materials were designed by Jonathan Ive , who had been hired by Amelio, and who collaborated with Jobs for more than a decade to reshape Apple's product design. A little more than a year later on July 21, 1999, Apple introduced the iBook consumer laptop. It culminated Jobs's strategy to produce only four products: refined versions of
2310-433: A distraction not only for me and my family, but everyone else at Apple as well", and explained that the break would allow the company "to focus on delivering extraordinary products". Though Jobs was absent, Apple recorded its best non-holiday quarter (Q1 FY 2009) during the recession , with revenue of $ 8.16 billion and profit of $ 1.21 billion. After years of speculation and multiple rumored "leaks", Apple unveiled
2464-622: A few hundred dollars. Some DAPs have FM radio tuners built in. Many also have an option to change the band from the usual 87.5 – 108.0 MHz to the Japanese band of 76.0 – 90.0 MHz. DAPs typically never have an AM band, or even HD Radio since such features would be either cost-prohibitive for the application, or because of AM's sensitivity to interference. Newer portable media players are now coming with Internet access via Wi-Fi . Examples of such devices are Android OS devices by various manufacturers, and iOS devices on Apple products like
2618-535: A few months after the MPMan, and also featured a 32 MB storage capacity. It was a success during the holiday season, with sales exceeding expectations. Interest and investment in digital music were subsequently spurred from it. The RIAA soon filed a lawsuit alleging that the device abetted illegal copying of music, but Diamond won a legal victory on the shoulders of Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc. and MP3 players were ruled legal devices. Because of
2772-495: A given media player is followed by an increase in the number, for example an MP5 or MP12 Player, despite there being no such corresponding MPEG standards. iriver of South Korea originally made portable CD players and then started making digital audio players and portable media players in 2002. Creative also introduced the ZEN line. Both of these attained high popularity in some regions. In 2004, Microsoft attempted to take advantage of
2926-423: A given price, semiconductor functionality doubles every two years. While consumer electronics continues in its trend of convergence , combining elements of many products, consumers face different purchasing decisions. There is an ever-increasing need to keep product information updated and comparable for the consumer to make an informed choice. Style, price, specification, and performance are all relevant. There are
3080-490: A gradual shift towards e-commerce web-storefronts. Many products include Internet access using technologies such as Wi-Fi , Bluetooth , EDGE , or Ethernet . Products not traditionally associated with computer use (such as TVs or hi-fi equipment) now provide options to connect to the Internet or to a computer using a home network to provide access to digital content. The desire for high-definition (HD) content has led
3234-444: A large screen, tablet-like media device known as the iPad on January 27, 2010. The iPad ran the same touch-based operating system as the iPhone, and all iPhone apps were compatible with the iPad. This gave the iPad a large app catalog on launch, though having very little development time before the release. Later that year on April 3, 2010, the iPad was launched in the U.S. It sold more than 300,000 units on its first day, and 500,000 by
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#17328988800233388-576: A more modern approach. This led to the Pink project in 1988, A/UX that same year, Copland in 1994, and evaluated the purchase of BeOS in 1996. Talks with Be stalled when the CEO, former Apple executive Jean-Louis Gassée , demanded $ 300 million in contrast to Apple's $ 125 million offer. Only weeks away from bankruptcy , Apple's board preferred NeXTSTEP and purchased NeXT in late 1996 for $ 400 million, retaining Steve Jobs . The NeXT acquisition
3542-407: A number of MOSFET integrated circuit (IC) chips, include various sensors that can be leveraged by pre-included and third-party software (such as a magnetometer , proximity sensors , barometer , gyroscope , accelerometer and more ), and support wireless communications protocols (such as Bluetooth , Wi-Fi , or satellite navigation ). In 2017, Greenpeace USA published a study of 17 of
3696-413: A popular standard format and as a result most digital audio players after this supported it and hence were often called MP3 players . While popularly being called MP3 players at the time, most players could play more than just the MP3 file format. Players also sometimes supported Windows Media Audio (WMA), Advanced Audio Coding (AAC), Vorbis , FLAC , Speex and Ogg . The first portable MP3 player
3850-529: A potential shift in attitudes to reuse and repair. With turnover of small household appliances high and costs relatively low, many consumers will throw unwanted electric goods in the normal dustbin, meaning that items of potentially high reuse or recycling value go to landfills. While more oversized items such as washing machines are usually collected, it has been estimated that the 160,000 tonnes of EEE in regular waste collections were worth £220 million. And 23% of EEE taken to Household Waste Recycling Centres
4004-790: A power struggle between Steve Jobs and CEO John Sculley , who had been hired away from Pepsi two years earlier by Jobs saying, "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or come with me and change the world?" Sculley removed Jobs as the head of the Macintosh division, with unanimous support from the Apple board of directors. The board of directors instructed Sculley to contain Jobs and his ability to launch expensive forays into untested products. Rather than submit to Sculley's direction, Jobs attempted to oust him from leadership. Jean-Louis Gassée informed Sculley that Jobs had been attempting to organize
4158-502: A preferential rate. This visit influenced Jobs to implement a GUI in Apple's products, starting with the Apple Lisa . Despite being pioneering as a mass-marketed GUI computer, the Lisa suffered from high costs and limited software options, leading to commercial failure. Jobs, angered by being pushed off the Lisa team, took over the company's Macintosh division. Wozniak and Raskin had envisioned
4312-446: A result, the big players rely on global markets to achieve economies of scale. Even these companies sometimes have to cooperate with each other, for instance on standards, to reduce the risk of their investments. In supply chain management , there is much discussion on risks related to such aspects of supply chains as short product life cycles, high competition combined with cooperation, and globalization. The consumer electronics industry
4466-441: A single substrate using electrical connections between circuits within the chip itself. IC technology led to more advanced and cheaper consumer electronics, such as transistorized televisions, pocket calculators , and by the 1980s, affordable video game consoles and personal computers that regular middle-class families could buy. Starting in the 1980s with the compact disc and the introduction of personal computers, and until
4620-468: A spartan user interface and a smaller form factor, the iPod was initially popular within the Macintosh community. In July 2002, Apple introduced the second generation update to the iPod, which was compatible with Windows computers through Musicmatch Jukebox . iPods quickly became the most popular DAP product and led the fast growth of this market during the early and mid 2000s. In 2002, Archos released
4774-599: A ten-year license agreement for current and future patents between the two companies. It is predicted that Apple will make US$ 280 million per year from this deal with HTC. In May 2014, Apple confirmed its intent to acquire Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine 's audio company Beats Electronics —producer of the "Beats by Dr. Dre" line of headphones and speaker products, and operator of the music streaming service Beats Music —for US$ 3 billion, and to sell their products through Apple's retail outlets and resellers. Iovine believed that Beats had always "belonged" with Apple, as
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4928-591: A tiny fraction of disposable income , rising from 0.5 percent in the US in 1920, to about 2 percent in 1980. Yet the sequence of electrical and mechanical durables have altered the activities and experiences of households in America and Britain in the twentieth century. With the expansion of cookers, vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, washing machines, radios, televisions, air conditioning, and microwave ovens, households have gained an escalating number of appliances. Despite
5082-413: A variety of other services , such as text messaging , MMS , email , Internet access , short-range wireless communications ( infrared , Bluetooth ), business applications, video games and digital photography . Mobile phones offering only those capabilities are known as feature phones ; mobile phones which offer greatly advanced computing capabilities are referred to as smartphones . A smartphone
5236-763: A videocassette recorders (VCRs) consume more electricity during the course of a year in standby mode than when they are used to record or playback videos. Similar findings were obtained concerning satellite boxes , which consume almost the same amount of energy in "on" and "off" modes. A 2012 study in the United Kingdom, carried out by the Energy Saving Trust , found that the devices using the most power on standby mode included televisions, satellite boxes, and other video and audio equipment. The study concluded that UK households could save up to £86 per year by switching devices off instead of using standby mode. A report from
5390-510: Is a portable device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems , which facilitate wider software , internet (including web navigation over mobile broadband ), and multimedia functionality (including music, video, cameras , and gaming ), alongside core phone functions such as voice calls and text messaging . Smartphones typically contain
5544-605: Is a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics contributing $ 1.2 billion in revenues. Samsung Electronics has one of the highest R&D expenditure as a proportion of revenues in the industry and spent about $ 2.9 billion in 2003. Along with its competitors, Samsung Electronics is global and employs 88,000 people in 89 offices in 46 countries. Not including facilities in Korea, it has 24 manufacturing complexes, 40 distribution bases and 15 branches spread over all continents except Antarctica. Countries with manufacturing facilities include
5698-525: Is based on NeXTSTEP , OpenStep , and BSD Unix , to combine the stability, reliability, and security of Unix with the ease of use of an overhauled user interface. Second, in May 2001, the first two Apple Store retail locations opened in Virginia and California, offering an improved presentation of the company's products. At the time, many speculated that the stores would fail, but they became highly successful, and
5852-531: Is best known for its consumer electronics , software , and services . Founded in 1976 as Apple Computer Company by Steve Jobs , Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne , the company was incorporated by Jobs and Wozniak as Apple Computer, Inc. the following year. It was renamed Apple Inc. in 2007 as the company had expanded its focus from computers to consumer electronics. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue , with US$ 391.04 billion in FY 2024. The company
6006-603: Is comparable across countries affects the extent of the gains from international integration. In addition, consumer preferences change over time to disturb existing patterns of behavior. A feature of some industries is that demand for variety increases as the market moves from first-time buying to replacement demand. A resource to further understand this idea of consumer preferences can be observed through Lizabeth Cohen's book titled, "A Consumers' Republic", "Only if we have large demands can we expect large production". The electronics industry, especially consumer electronics, emerged in
6160-402: Is in its 35th year. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Computer Society also have initiated a conference to research on next generation consumer electronics as Smart Electronics. The conference named IEEE Symposium on Smart Electronics Systems ( IEEE-iSES ) is on its 9th year. Electronics retailing is a significant part of the retail industry in many countries. In
6314-626: Is limited and energy intensive. Electronic waste describes discarded electrical or electronic devices. Many consumer electronics may contain toxic minerals and elements, and many electronic scrap components, such as CRTs , may contain contaminants such as lead , cadmium , beryllium , mercury , dioxins , or brominated flame retardants . Electronic waste recycling may involve significant risk to workers and communities and great care must be taken to avoid unsafe exposure in recycling operations and leaking of materials such as heavy metals from landfills and incinerator ashes. However, large amounts of
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6468-903: Is nearest competitor in 2006 being SanDisk . Apple also led in Japan over its homegrown makers Sony and Panasonic during this time, although the gap between Apple and Sony had closed by about 2010. In South Korea, the market was led by local brands iriver , Samsung and Cowon as of 2005. European buying patterns differed; while Apple was in a particularly strong position in the United Kingdom, continental Western Europe generally preferred cheaper, often Chinese rebranded players under local brands such as Grundig . Meanwhile, in Eastern Europe including Russia, higher priced players with improved design or functionality were preferred instead, and here Korean makers like iriver and Samsung were particularly popular, as well as such OEM models under local brands. Creative
6622-486: Is part of the wider electronics industry . In turn, the driving force behind the electronics industry is the semiconductor industry . For its first fifty years, the phonograph turntable did not use electronics; the needle and sound horn were purely mechanical technologies. However, in the 1920s, radio broadcasting became the basis of mass production of radio receivers . The vacuum tubes that had made radios practical were used with record players as well, to amplify
6776-620: Is the very embodiment of these aspects of supply chain management and related risks. While some of the supply and demand related risks are similar to such industries as the toy industry, the consumer electronics industry faces additional risks due to its vertically integrated supply chains. There are also numerous supply-chain-wide contextual risks that cut across the supply chain especially impacting companies with global supply chains. These include cultural differences in multinational operations, environmental risk, regulations risk, and exchange rate risk across multiple countries. Whether or not demand
6930-422: Is used to distinguish them from " white goods ", which are meant for housekeeping tasks, such as washing machines and refrigerators . In British English, they are often called brown goods by producers and sellers. In the 2010s, this distinction is absent in large big box consumer electronics stores , which sell entertainment, communication and home office devices, light fixtures and appliances, including
7084-513: Is used within some consumer electronics, such as mobile phones . This type of software may be embedded within the hardware of electronic devices. Some consumer electronics include software that is used on a personal computer in conjunction with electronic devices, such as camcorders and digital cameras , and third-party software for such devices also exists. Some consumer electronics adhere to protocols, such as connection protocols "to high speed bi-directional signals". In telecommunications ,
7238-398: Is valued at just over $ 3.2 trillion. Apple has received criticism regarding its contractors ' labor practices, its relationship with trade unions , its environmental practices , and its business ethics, including anti-competitive practices and materials sourcing. Nevertheless, the company has a large following and enjoys a high level of brand loyalty . Apple Computer Company
7392-582: The Apple II series was discontinued. It was expensive to produce, and the company decided it was still absorbing sales from lower-cost Macintosh models. After the launch of the LC, Apple encouraged developers to create applications for Macintosh rather than Apple II, and authorized salespersons to redirect consumers from Apple II and toward Macintosh. The Apple IIe was discontinued in 1993. Apple experimented with several other unsuccessful consumer targeted products during
7546-499: The EU , demand for MP3 players peaked in 2007 with 43.5 million devices sold totalling 3.8 billion euros. Both sales and revenue experienced a double-digit shrinkage for the first time in 2010. In India, sales of PMPs decreased for the first time in 2012, a few years after developed economies. The market was led by Apple with a share of about 50%, while Sony and Philips were the other major brands. Meanwhile, sales of Apple's best selling product,
7700-505: The Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC). Audio files purchased from online stores may include digital rights management (DRM) copy protection, which many modern players support. The JPEG format is widely supported by players. Some players, like the iPod series, provide compatibility to display additional file formats like GIF , PNG , and TIFF , while others are bundled with conversion software. Most newer players support
7854-553: The International Energy Agency in 2014 found that $ 80 billion of power is wasted globally per year due to inefficiency of electronic devices. Consumers can reduce unwanted use of standby power by unplugging their devices, using power strips with switches, or by buying devices that are standardized for better energy management, particularly Energy Star -marked products. A high number of different metals and low concentration rates in electronics means that recycling
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#17328988800238008-548: The MPEG-4 Part 2 video format, and many other players are compatible with Windows Media Video (WMV) and AVI . Software included with the players may be able to convert video files into a compatible format. Many players have a built-in electret microphone which allows recording. Usually recording quality is poor, suitable for speech but not music. There are also professional-quality recorders suitable for high-quality music recording with external microphones, at prices starting at
8162-506: The Macworld Expo on January 9, 2007, Jobs announced the renaming of Apple Computer, Inc. to Apple Inc., because the company had broadened its focus from computers to consumer electronics. This event also saw the announcement of the iPhone and the Apple TV . The company sold 270,000 first-generation iPhones during the first 30 hours of sales, and the device was called "a game changer for
8316-527: The Power Macintosh , the first of many computers with Motorola's PowerPC processor. In the wake of the alliance, Apple opened up to the idea of allowing Motorola and other companies to build Macintosh clones . Over the next two years, 75 distinct Macintosh clone models were introduced. However, by 1996, Apple executives were worried that the clones were cannibalizing sales of its own high-end computers, where profit margins were highest. In 1996, Spindler
8470-518: The Power Macintosh G3 desktop and PowerBook G3 laptop for professionals, and the iMac desktop and iBook laptop for consumers. Jobs said the small product line allowed for a greater focus on quality and innovation. Around then, Apple also completed numerous acquisitions to create a portfolio of digital media production software for both professionals and consumers. Apple acquired Macromedia 's Key Grip digital video editing software project which
8624-535: The Sansa line of players, starting with the e100 series, and then following up with the m200 series, and c100 series. In 2007, Apple introduced the iPod Touch , the first iPod with a multi-touch screen. Some similar products existed before such as the iriver clix in 2006. In South Korea, sales of MP3 players peaked in 2006, but started declining afterwards. This was driven partly by the launch of mobile television services (DMB), which along with increased demand of movies on
8778-475: The SoundJam MP audio player software from Casady & Greene . Apple renamed the program iTunes , and simplified the user interface and added CD burning. In 2001, Apple changed course with three announcements. First, on March 24, 2001, Apple announced the release of a new modern operating system, Mac OS X . This was after numerous failed attempts in the early 1990s, and several years of development. Mac OS X
8932-512: The TRS-80 and Commodore PET , because of its character cell-based color graphics and open architecture . The Apple I and early Apple II models use ordinary audio cassette tapes as storage devices, which were superseded by the 5 + 1 ⁄ 4 -inch floppy disk drive and interface called the Disk II in 1978. The Apple II was chosen to be the desktop platform for the first killer application of
9086-539: The Windows 95 and NT operating systems, which did not have native support for USB connections. In 1999 the first hard drive based DAP using a 2.5" laptop drive, the Personal Jukebox (PJB-100) designed by Compaq and released by Hango Electronics Co with 4.8 GB storage, which held about 1,200 songs, and pioneered what would be called the jukebox segment of digital music portables. This segment eventually became
9240-628: The chief operating officer . Gassée left the company later that year to set up a rival, Be Inc. The company pivoted strategy and, in October 1990, introduced three lower-cost models: the Macintosh Classic , the Macintosh LC , and the Macintosh IIsi , all of which generated significant sales due to pent-up demand. In 1991, Apple introduced the hugely successful PowerBook with a design that set
9394-523: The iLife suite. At the Worldwide Developers Conference keynote address on June 6, 2005, Jobs announced that Apple would move away from PowerPC processors, and the Mac would transition to Intel processors in 2006. On January 10, 2006, the new MacBook Pro and iMac became the first Apple computers to use Intel's Core Duo CPU. By August 7, 2006, Apple made the transition to Intel chips for
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#17328988800239548-471: The iPhone , iPod Touch , and iPad . Internet access has even enabled people to use the Internet as an underlying communications layer for their choice of music for automated music randomisation services like Pandora , to on-demand video access (which also has music available) such as YouTube. This technology has enabled casual and hobbyist DJs to cue their tracks from a smaller package from an Internet connection, sometimes they will use two identical devices on
9702-401: The third- and fourth-generation iPads , which featured Retina displays ; and the iPad Mini , which featured a 7.9-inch screen in contrast to the iPad's 9.7-inch screen. These launches were successful, with the iPhone 5 (released September 21, 2012) becoming Apple's biggest iPhone launch with over two million pre-orders and sales of three million iPads in three days following the launch of
9856-441: The ubiquity of these goods, their diffusion is not well understood. Some types of appliances diffuse more frequently than others. In particular, home entertainment appliances such as radio and television have diffused much faster than household and kitchen machines." Consumer electronics devices include those used for Increasingly consumer electronics products such as digital distribution of video games have become based on
10010-664: The "best of both worlds" in the market. Media players' firmware may be equipped with a basic file manager and a text reader. There are three categories of audio formats: Consumer electronics Consumer electronics or home electronics are electronic ( analog or digital ) equipment intended for everyday use, typically in private homes. Consumer electronics include devices used for entertainment , communications and recreation . These products are usually referred to as black goods in American English, due to many products being housed in black or dark casings. This term
10164-404: The 1980s and 1990s, followed by DVD players and Blu-ray players). Stores also sell smart light fixtures and appliances , digital cameras , camcorders , mobile phones , and smartphones . Some of the newer products sold include virtual reality head-mounted display goggles, smart home devices that connect home devices to the Internet , streaming devices, and wearable technology . In
10318-547: The 1990s, including QuickTake digital cameras , PowerCD portable CD audio players, speakers , the Pippin video game console, the eWorld online service, and Apple Interactive Television Box . Enormous resources were invested in the problematic Newton tablet division, based on John Sculley's unrealistic market forecasts. Throughout this period, Microsoft continued to gain market share with Windows by focusing on delivering software to inexpensive personal computers, while Apple
10472-476: The 2000s. Other non-phone products such as the PlayStation Portable and PlayStation Vita have also been considered to be PMPs. DAPs and PMPs have declined in popularity after the late 2000s due to increasing worldwide adoption of smartphones that already come with PMP functionalities. Sales peaked in 2007 and market revenue (worth $ 21.6 billion) peaked in 2008, albeit notably mobile phones that could play music outsold DAPs by almost three to one as of 2007. In
10626-520: The 2010s, most consumer electronics have become based on digital technologies. They have essentially merged with the computer industry in what is increasingly referred to as the consumerization of information technology . Some consumer electronics stores have also begun selling office and baby furniture . Consumer electronics stores may be " brick and mortar " physical retail stores, online stores, or combinations of both. Annual consumer electronics sales are expected to reach $ 2.9 trillion by 2020. It
10780-560: The 20th century and has become a global industry worth billions of dollars. Contemporary society uses all manner of electronic devices built-in automated or semi-automated factories operated by the industry. Most consumer electronics are built in China, due to maintenance cost, availability of materials, quality, and speed as opposed to other countries such as the United States. Cities such as Shenzhen have become important production centres for
10934-530: The App Store could become a billion-dollar business for Apple. By October 2008, Apple was the third-largest mobile handset supplier in the world due to the popularity of the iPhone. On January 14, 2009, Jobs announced in an internal memo that he would be taking a six-month medical leave of absence from Apple until the end of June 2009 and would spend the time focusing on his health. In the email, Jobs stated that "the curiosity over my personal health continues to be
11088-471: The Apple II division and stating that the company had "been going in the wrong direction for the last five years". Wozniak remained employed by Apple as a representative, receiving a stipend estimated to be $ 120,000 per year. Jobs and Wozniak remained Apple shareholders following their departures. After the departures of Jobs and Wozniak in 1985, Sculley launched the Macintosh 512K that year with quadruple
11242-548: The CW100, under the brand name iAUDIO . In December 2000, some months after the Creative's NOMAD Jukebox , Archos released its Jukebox 6000 with a 6 GB hard drive. Philips also released a player called the Rush. On 23 October 2001, Apple unveiled the first generation iPod , a 5 GB hard drive based DAP with a 1.8" hard drive and a 2" monochrome display. With the development of
11396-421: The Macintosh as a low-cost computer with a text-based interface like the Apple II, but a plane crash in 1981 forced Wozniak to step back from the project. Jobs quickly redefined the Macintosh as a graphical system that would be cheaper than the Lisa, undercutting his former division. Jobs was also hostile to the Apple II division, which at the time, generated most of the company's revenue. In 1984, Apple launched
11550-583: The Macintosh, the first personal computer without a bundled programming language . Its debut was signified by " 1984 ", a US$ 1.5 million television advertisement directed by Ridley Scott that aired during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII on January 22, 1984. This was hailed as a watershed event for Apple's success and was called a "masterpiece" by CNN and one of the greatest TV advertisements of all time by TV Guide . The advertisement created great interest in Macintosh , and sales were initially good, but began to taper off dramatically after
11704-637: The RAM, and introduced the LaserWriter , the first reasonably priced PostScript laser printer . PageMaker , an early desktop publishing application taking advantage of the PostScript language, was also released by Aldus Corporation in July 1985. It has been suggested that the combination of Macintosh, LaserWriter, and PageMaker was responsible for the creation of the desktop publishing market. This dominant position in
11858-574: The South Korean giant Samsung Electronics . Sony entered the digital audio player market in 1999 with the Vaio Music Clip and Memory Stick Walkman , however they were technically not MP3 players as it did not support the MP3 format but instead Sony's own ATRAC format and WMA . The company's first MP3-supporting Walkman player did not come until 2004. Over the years, various hard-drive-based and flash-based DAPs and PMPs have been released under
12012-472: The US, Malaysia, China, India, and Hungary. The increase in popularity of such domestic appliances as ' white goods ' is a characteristic element of consumption patterns during the golden age of the Western economy. Europe's White Goods industry has evolved over the past 40 years, first by changing tariff barriers, and later by technical and demand shifts. The spending on domestic appliances has claimed only
12166-428: The US. However, in 1988 Kramer's failure to raise the £60,000 required to renew the patent meant it entered the public domain. Apple Inc. hired Kramer as a consultant and presented his work as an example of prior art in the field of digital audio players during their litigation with Burst.com almost two decades later. In 2008, Apple acknowledged Kramer as the inventor of the digital audio player The Listen Up Player
12320-590: The United States, dedicated consumer electronics stores have mostly given way to big-box stores such as Best Buy , the largest consumer electronics retailer in the country, although smaller dedicated stores include Apple Stores , and specialist stores that serve, for example, audiophiles and exceptions, such as the single-branch B&H Photo store in New York City. Broad-based retailers, such as Walmart and Target , also sell consumer electronics in many of their stores. In April 2014, retail e-commerce sales were
12474-611: The Walkman range. The Samsung YEPP line was first released in 1999 with the aim of making the smallest music players on the market. In 2000, Creative released the 6 GB hard-drive-based Creative NOMAD Jukebox. The name borrowed the jukebox metaphor popularised by Remote Solution , also used by Archos . Later players in the Creative NOMAD range used microdrives rather than laptop drives. In October 2000, South Korean software company Cowon Systems released their first MP3 player,
12628-543: The ability to download music to FlashPAC. AAC and such music downloading services later formed the foundation for the Apple iPod and iTunes. The first production-volume portable digital audio player was The Audible Player (also known as MobilePlayer, or Digital Words To Go) from Audible.com available for sale in January 1998, for $ 200. It only supported playback of digital audio in Audible's proprietary, low-bitrate format which
12782-502: The ancestors of digital audio players such as the Apple iPod. There are several types of MP3 players: British scientist Kane Kramer invented the first digital audio player, which he called the IXI . His 1979 prototypes were capable of up to one hour of audio playback but did not enter commercial production. His UK patent application was not filed until 1981 and was issued in 1985 in the UK and 1987 in
12936-592: The bathroom type. Radio broadcasting in the early 20th century brought the first major consumer product, the broadcast receiver . Later products included telephones , televisions , and calculators , then audio and video recorders and players, video game consoles , mobile phones , personal computers and MP3 players . In the 2010s, consumer electronics stores often sell GPS , automotive electronics ( vehicle audio ), video game consoles , electronic musical instruments (e.g., synthesizer keyboards), karaoke machines, digital cameras , and video players ( VCRs in
13090-582: The business world: VisiCalc , a spreadsheet program released in 1979. VisiCalc created a business market for the Apple II and gave home users an additional reason to buy an Apple II: compatibility with the office, but Apple II market share remained behind home computers made by competitors such as Atari , Commodore , and Tandy . On December 12, 1980, Apple (ticker symbol "AAPL") went public selling 4.6 million shares at $ 22 per share ($ .10 per share when adjusting for stock splits as of September 3, 2022 ), generating over $ 100 million, which
13244-671: The core of its computer offerings. The next month, in August 1997, Steve Jobs convinced Microsoft to make a $ 150 million investment in Apple and a commitment to continue developing Mac software. This was seen as an "antitrust insurance policy" for Microsoft which had recently settled with the Department of Justice over anti-competitive practices in the United States v. Microsoft Corp. case. Around then, Jobs donated Apple's internal library and archives to Stanford University , to focus more on
13398-428: The current shape for almost all modern laptops. The same year, Apple introduced System 7 , a major upgrade to the Macintosh operating system, adding color to the interface and introducing new networking capabilities. The success of the lower-cost Macs and PowerBook brought increasing revenue. For some time, Apple was doing very well, introducing fresh new products at increasing profits. The magazine MacAddict named
13552-402: The desktop publishing market allowed the company to focus on higher price points, the so-called "high-right policy" named for the position on a chart of price vs. profits. Newer models selling at higher price points offered higher profit margin , and appeared to have no effect on total sales as power users snapped up every increase in speed. Although some worried about pricing themselves out of
13706-450: The desktop publishing market and estranged many of its original consumer customer base who could no longer afford Apple products. The Christmas season of 1989 was the first in the company's history to have declining sales, which led to a 20% drop in Apple's stock price. During this period, the relationship between Sculley and Gassée deteriorated, leading Sculley to effectively demote Gassée in January 1990 by appointing Michael Spindler as
13860-657: The dominant type of digital music player. Also at the end of 1999 the first in-dash MP3 player appeared. The Empeg Car offered players in several capacities ranging from 5 to 28 GB. The unit did not catch on and was discontinued in the fall of 2001. For the next couple of years, there were offerings from South Korean companies, namely the startups iRiver (brand of Reigncom), Mpio (brand of DigitalWay) and Cowon . At its peak, these Korean makers held as much as 40% world market share in MP3 players. These manufacturers however lost their way after 2004 as they failed to compete with new iPods . By 2006 they were also overtaken by
14014-537: The earliest transistors at Bell led to transistor radios . This led to the emergence of the home entertainment consumer electronics industry starting in the 1950s, largely due to the efforts of Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo (now Sony ) in successfully commercializing transistor technology for a mass market, with affordable transistor radios and then transistorized television sets . Integrated circuits (ICs) followed when manufacturers built circuits (usually for military purposes) on
14168-426: The early 2000s, many consumer electronics devices such as televisions and stereo systems, were digitized: digital computer technology, and thus digital signals, were integrated into the operation of consumer electronics devices, drastically changing their operation but with improved results such as improved image quality in televisions. This was made possible by Moore's law . In 2004, the consumer electronics industry
14322-404: The end of the first week. In May 2010, Apple's market cap exceeded that of competitor Microsoft for the first time since 1989. In June 2010, Apple released the iPhone 4 , which introduced video calling using FaceTime , multitasking , and a new design with an exposed stainless steel frame as the phone's antenna system. Later that year, Apple again refreshed the iPod line by introducing
14476-509: The entire Mac product line—over one year sooner than announced. The Power Mac, iBook, and PowerBook brands were retired during the transition; the Mac Pro , MacBook , and MacBook Pro became their respective successors. Apple also introduced Boot Camp in 2006 to help users install Windows XP or Windows Vista on their Intel Macs alongside Mac OS X. Apple's success during this period was evident in its stock price . Between early 2003 and 2006,
14630-514: The first PMP, the Archos Jukebox Multimedia with a little 1.5" colour screen. The next year, Archos released another multimedia jukebox , the AV300 , with a 3.8" screen and a 20 GB hard drive. In the same year, Toshiba released the first Gigabeat . In 2003, Dell launched a line of portable digital music players called Dell DJ . They were discontinued by 2006. The name MP4 player
14784-504: The first of more than 500 stores around the world. Third, on October 23, 2001, the iPod portable digital audio player debuted. The product was first sold on November 10, 2001, and was extremely successful, with over 100 million units sold within six years. In 2003, the iTunes Store was introduced with music downloads for 99¢ a song and iPod integration. It quickly became the market leader in online music services, with over 5 billion downloads by June 19, 2008. Two years later,
14938-470: The first prototype Apple I at the Homebrew Computer Club in July 1976. The Apple I was sold as a motherboard with CPU , RAM , and basic textual-video chips—a base kit concept which was not yet marketed as a complete personal computer. It was priced soon after debut for $ 666.66 (equivalent to $ 3,600 in 2023). Wozniak later said he was unaware of the coincidental mark of the beast in
15092-399: The first three months as reviews started to come in. Jobs had required 128 kilobytes of RAM, which limited its speed and software in favor of aspiring for a projected price point of $ 1,000 (equivalent to $ 2,900 in 2023). The Macintosh shipped for $ 2,495 (equivalent to $ 7,300 in 2023), a price panned by critics due to its slow performance. In early 1985, this sales slump triggered
15246-454: The globe and by 2005, more than half of all music sold in South Korea was sold directly to mobile phones and all major handset makers in the world had released MP3 playing phones. By 2006, more MP3 playing mobile phones were sold than all stand-alone MP3 players put together. The rapid rise of the media player in phones was quoted by Apple as a primary reason for developing the iPhone . In 2007,
15400-408: The go led to a transition away from music-only players to PMPs. By 2008, more video-enabled PMPs were sold than audio-only players. By the mid-2000s and the years after, Apple with its iPod was the best-selling DAP or PMP by a significant margin, with one of out four sold worldwide being an iPod. It was especially dominant in the United States where it had over 70% of sales at different points in time,
15554-693: The growing PMP market by launching the Portable Media Center (PMC) platform. It was introduced at the 2004 Consumer Electronics Show with the announcement of the Zen Portable Media Center , which was co-developed by Creative . The Microsoft Zune series would later be based on the Gigabeat S , one of the PMC-implemented players. In May 2005, flash memory maker SanDisk entered the PMP market with
15708-432: The head or the body; i.e. to add more memory). Today, every smartphone also serves as a portable media player; however, prior to the rise of smartphones in the 2007–2012 time frame, a variety of handheld players were available to store and play music. The immediate predecessor to the portable media player was the portable CD player and prior to that, the personal stereo . In particular, Sony 's Walkman and Discman are
15862-554: The highest in the consumer electronic and computer categories as well. Some consumer electronics retailers offer extended warranties on products with programs such as SquareTrade . An electronics district is an area of commerce with a high density of retail stores that sell consumer electronics. Consumer electronic service can refer to the maintenance of said products. When consumer electronics have malfunctions, they may sometimes be repaired. In 2013, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
16016-458: The iPad Mini and fourth-generation iPad (released November 3, 2012). Apple also released a third-generation 13-inch MacBook Pro with a Retina display and new iMac and Mac Mini computers. On August 20, 2012, Apple's rising stock price increased the company's market capitalization to a then-record $ 624 billion. This beat the non-inflation-adjusted record for market capitalization previously set by Microsoft in 1999. On August 24, 2012,
16170-479: The iPod, were eclipsed by the iPhone in 2011. DAPs continue to be made in lower volumes by manufacturers such as SanDisk, Sony, IRIVER, Philips, Apple, Cowon, and a range of Chinese manufacturers namely Aigo, Newsmy, PYLE and ONDA. They often have specific selling points in the smartphone era, such as portability (for small sized players) or for high quality sound suited for audiophiles . PMPs are capable of playing digital audio , images , and/or video . Usually,
16324-465: The iTunes Store was the world's largest music retailer. In 2002, Apple purchased Nothing Real for its advanced digital compositing application Shake , and Emagic for the music productivity application Logic . The purchase of Emagic made Apple the first computer manufacturer to own a music software company. The acquisition was followed by the development of Apple's consumer-level GarageBand application. The release of iPhoto that year completed
16478-557: The iTunes Store, effective in May 2007. Other record labels eventually followed suit and Apple published a press release in January 2009 to announce that all songs on the iTunes Store are available without their FairPlay DRM. In July 2008, Apple launched the App Store to sell third-party applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch . Within a month, the store sold 60 million applications and registered an average daily revenue of $ 1 million, with Jobs speculating in August 2008 that
16632-432: The incorporation of Apple. During the first five years of operations, revenues grew exponentially, doubling about every four months. Between September 1977 and September 1980, yearly sales grew from $ 775,000 to US$ 118 million, an average annual growth rate of 533%. The Apple II , also designed by Wozniak, was introduced on April 16, 1977, at the first West Coast Computer Faire . It differs from its major rivals,
16786-424: The increased popularity in listening to sound from analog audio devices, such as phonographs , as opposed to digital sound, has sparked a noticeable increase of business for the electronic repair industry there. A mobile phone , cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, or hand phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over
16940-523: The industry to develop a number of technologies, such as WirelessHD or ITU-T G.hn , which are optimized for distribution of HD content between consumer electronic devices in a home. The consumer electronics industry faces consumers with unpredictable tastes on the demand side, supplier-related delays or disruptions on the supply side, and production challenges occurring in the process. The high rate of technology evolution or revolution requires large investments without any guarantee of profitable returns. As
17094-408: The industry". In an article posted on Apple's website on February 6, 2007, Jobs wrote that Apple would be willing to sell music on the iTunes Store without digital rights management , thereby allowing tracks to be played on third-party players if record labels would agree to drop the technology. On April 2, 2007, Apple and EMI jointly announced the removal of DRM technology from EMI's catalog in
17248-548: The industry, attracting many consumer electronics companies such as Apple Inc. An electronic component is any essential discrete device or physical entity in an electronic system used to affect electrons or their associated fields. Electronic components are mostly industrial products, available in a singular form, and are not to be confused with electrical elements , conceptual abstractions representing idealized electronic components. Consumer electronics such as personal computers use various types of software. Embedded software
17402-598: The internet and digital technologies. The consumer electronics industry has primarily merged with the software industry in what is increasingly referred to as the consumerization of information technology . One overriding characteristic of consumer electronic products is the trend of ever-falling prices. This is driven by gains in manufacturing efficiency and automation , lower labor costs as manufacturing has moved to lower-wage countries, and improvements in semiconductor design. Semiconductor components benefit from Moore's law , an observed principle which states that, for
17556-742: The late 1990s following the creation of the MP3 codec in Germany. MP3-playing devices were mostly pioneered by South Korean startups, who by 2002 would control the majority of global sales. However the industry would eventually be defined by the popular Apple iPod . In 2006, 20% of Americans owned a PMP, a figure strongly driven by the young; more than half (54%) of American teens owned one, as did 30% of young adults aged 18 to 34. In 2007, 210 million PMPs were sold worldwide, worth US$ 19.5 billion. In 2008, video-enabled players would overtake audio-only players. Increasing sales of smartphones and tablet computers have led to
17710-481: The market, the high-right policy was in full force by the mid-1980s, due to Jean-Louis Gassée's slogan of "fifty-five or die", referring to the 55% profit margins of the Macintosh II . This policy began to backfire late in the decade as desktop publishing programs appeared on IBM PC compatibles with some of the same functionality of the Macintosh at far lower price points. The company lost its dominant position in
17864-456: The most part since 2011, Apple has been the world's largest company by market capitalization , and, as of 2023 , is the largest manufacturing company by revenue , the fourth-largest personal computer vendor by unit sales , the largest vendor of tablet computers , and the largest vendor of mobile phones in the world. Apple became the first publicly traded U.S. company to be valued at over $ 1 trillion in 2018, and, as of June 2024 ,
18018-418: The most valuable consumer-facing brand in the world. In June 2011, Jobs surprisingly took the stage and unveiled iCloud , an online storage and syncing service for music, photos, files, and software which replaced MobileMe , Apple's previous attempt at content syncing. This would be the last product launch Jobs would attend before his death. On August 24, 2011, Jobs resigned his position as CEO of Apple. He
18172-549: The new technology, and instead young startups would come to dominate the early era of MP3 players. Other early MP3 portables included the Creative Labs Nomad and the RCA Lyra . These portables were small and light, but had only enough memory to hold around 7 to 20 songs at normal 128 kbit/s compression rates. They also used slower parallel port connections to transfer files from PC to player, necessary as most PCs then used
18326-474: The next decade with the introductions of the iMac , iPod , iPhone , and iPad devices to critical acclaim as well as the iTunes Store , launching the " Think different " advertising campaign, and opening the Apple Store retail chain. These moves elevated Apple to consistently be one of the world's most valuable brands since about 2010. Jobs resigned in 2011 for health reasons, and died two months later; he
18480-537: The number 666, and that he came up with the price because he liked "repeating digits". Apple Computer, Inc. was incorporated in Cupertino, California , on January 3, 1977, without Wayne, who had left and sold his share of the company back to Jobs and Wozniak for $ 800 only twelve days after having co-founded it. Multimillionaire Mike Markkula provided essential business expertise and funding of $ 250,000 (equivalent to $ 1,257,000 in 2023) to Jobs and Wozniak during
18634-425: The number of phones that could play media was over 1 billion. Some companies have created music-centric sub-brands for mobile phones, for example the former Sony Ericsson 's Walkman range or Nokia 's XpressMusic range, which have extra emphasis on music playback and typically have features such as dedicated music buttons. Mobile phones with PMP functionalities such as video playback also started appearing in
18788-601: The ones using electronics the most. "People who frequently use their thumbs to type text messages on cell phones can develop a painful affliction called De Quervain syndrome that affects their tendons on their hands. The best-known disease in this category is called carpal tunnel syndrome , which results from pressure on the median nerve in the wrist". Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered and incorporated in Cupertino, California , in Silicon Valley . It
18942-505: The period between 1989 and 1991 as the "first golden age" of the Macintosh. The success of lower-cost consumer Macs, especially the LC, cannibalized higher-priced machines. To address this, management introduced several new brands, selling largely identical machines at different price points, for different markets: the high-end Quadra series, the mid-range Centris series, and the consumer-marketed Performa series. This led to significant consumer confusion between so many models. In 1993,
19096-505: The player's notoriety as the target of a major lawsuit, the Rio is erroneously assumed to be the first digital audio player. Eiger Labs and Diamond went on to establish a new segment in the portable audio player market and the following year saw several new manufacturers enter this market. The PMP300 would be the start of the Rio line of players. Noticeably, major technology companies did not catch on with
19250-448: The present and the future rather than the past. He ended the Mac clone deals and in September 1997, purchased the largest clone maker, Power Computing . On November 10, 1997, the Apple Store website launched, which was tied to a new build-to-order manufacturing model similar to PC manufacturer Dell 's success. The moves paid off for Jobs; at the end of his first year as CEO, the company had
19404-420: The price of Apple's stock increased more than tenfold, from around $ 6 per share ( split-adjusted ) to over $ 80. When Apple surpassed Dell's market cap in January 2006, Jobs sent an email to Apple employees saying Dell's CEO Michael Dell should eat his words. Nine years prior, Dell had said that if he ran Apple he would "shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders". During his keynote speech at
19558-403: The produced electronic waste from developed countries is exported, and handled by the informal sector in countries like India, despite the fact that exporting electronic waste to them is illegal. Strong informal sector can be a problem for the safe and clean recycling. E-waste policy has gone through various incarnations since the 1970s, with emphases changing as the decades passed. More weight
19712-573: The raw materials. The energy consumption of consumer electronics and their environmental impact, either from their production processes or the disposal of the devices, is increasing steadily. EIA estimates that electronic devices and gadgets account for about 10%–15% of the energy use in American homes – largely because of their number; the average house has dozens of electronic devices. The energy consumption of consumer electronics increases – in America and Europe – to about 50% of household consumption if
19866-442: The sound so that it could be played through a loudspeaker . Television was soon invented but remained insignificant in the consumer market until the 1950s. The first working transistor , a point-contact transistor , was invented by John Bardeen and Walter Houser Brattain at Bell Labs in 1947, which led to significant research in the field of solid-state semiconductors in the early-1950s. The invention and development of
20020-881: The stigma for some of owning second-hand goods. But the benefits of reuse could allow lower-income households access to previously unaffordable technology while helping the environment at the same time. Desktop monitors and laptops produce major physical health concerns for humans when bodies are forced into unhealthy and uncomfortable positions to see the screen better. From this, neck and back pains and problems increase, commonly referred to as repetitive strain injuries . Using electronics before going to bed makes it difficult for people to fall asleep, hurting human health. Sleeping less prevents people from performing to their full potential physically and mentally and can also "increase rates of obesity and diabetes", which are "long-term health consequences". Obesity and diabetes are more commonly seen in students and in youth because they tend to be
20174-418: The term is redefined to include home appliances such as refrigerators , dryers , clothes washers and dishwashers . Standby power – used by consumer electronics and appliances while they are turned off – accounts for 5–10% of total household energy consumption, costing $ 100 annually to the average household in the United States. A study by United States Department of Energy 's Berkeley Lab found that
20328-472: The user the song currently playing. The first car audio hard drive-based MP3 player was also released in 1997 by MP32Go and was called the MP32Go Player. It consisted of a 3 GB IBM 2.5" hard drive that was housed in a trunk-mounted enclosure connected to the car's radio system. It retailed for $ 599 and was a commercial failure. The Rio PMP300 from Diamond Multimedia was introduced in September 1998,
20482-596: The world's largest professional society, has many initiatives to advance the state of the art of consumer electronics. IEEE has a dedicated society of thousands of professionals to promote CE, called the Consumer Electronics Society (CESoc). IEEE has multiple periodicals and international conferences to promote CE and encourage collaborative research and development in CE. The flagship conference of CESoc, called IEEE International Conference on Consumer Electronics (ICCE),
20636-438: The world's leading consumer electronics companies about their energy and resource consumption and the use of chemicals. Electronic devices use thousands rare metals and rare earth elements (40 on average for a smartphone ), these material are extracted and refined using water and energy-intensive processes. These metals are also used in the renewable energy industry meaning that consumer electronics are directly competing for
20790-415: Was a marketing term for inexpensive portable media players, usually from little-known or generic device manufacturers. The name itself is a misnomer , since most MP4 players through 2007 were incompatible with the MPEG-4 Part 14 or the .mp4 container format. Instead, the term refers to their ability to play more file types than just MP3. In this sense, in some markets like Brazil, any new function added to
20944-519: Was delivering a richly engineered but expensive experience. Apple relied on high profit margins and never developed a clear response; it sued Microsoft for making a GUI similar to the Lisa in Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp. The lawsuit dragged on for years and was finally dismissed. The major product flops and the rapid loss of market share to Windows sullied Apple's reputation, and in 1993 Sculley
21098-448: Was developed for spoken word recordings. Capacity was limited to 4 MB of internal flash memory, or about 2 hours of play, using a custom rechargeable battery pack. The unit had no display and rudimentary controls. MP3 was introduced as an audio coding standard in 1992. It was based on several audio data compression techniques, including the modified discrete cosine transform (MDCT), FFT and psychoacoustic methods. MP3 became
21252-454: Was finalized on February 9, 1997, and the board brought Jobs back to Apple as an advisor. On July 9, 1997, Jobs staged a boardroom coup that resulted in Amelio's resignation after overseeing a three-year record-low stock price and crippling financial losses. The board named Jobs as interim CEO and he immediately reviewed the product lineup. Jobs canceled 70% of models, ending 3,000 jobs and paring to
21406-475: Was founded on April 1, 1976, by Steve Jobs , Steve Wozniak , and Ronald Wayne as a partnership . The company's first product is the Apple I , a computer designed and hand-built entirely by Wozniak. To finance its creation, Jobs sold his Volkswagen Bus , and Wozniak sold his HP-65 calculator. Neither received the full selling price but in total earned $ 1,300 (equivalent to $ 7,000 in 2023). Wozniak debuted
21560-497: Was founded to produce and market Wozniak's Apple I personal computer. Its second computer, the Apple II , became a best seller as one of the first mass-produced microcomputers . Apple introduced the Lisa in 1983 and the Macintosh in 1984, as some of the first computers to use a graphical user interface and a mouse . By 1985, internal company problems led to Jobs leaving to form NeXT, Inc. , and Wozniak withdrawing to other ventures; John Sculley served as long-time CEO for over
21714-417: Was gradually placed on the need to dispose of e-waste more carefully due to the toxic materials it may contain. There has also been recognition that various valuable metals and plastics from waste electrical equipment can be recycled for other uses. More recently, the desirability of reusing whole appliances has been foregrounded in the 'preparation for reuse' guidelines. The policy focus is slowly moving towards
21868-445: Was immediately resaleable – or would be with minor repairs or refurbishment. This indicates a lack of awareness among consumers about where and how to dispose of EEE and the potential value of things that are going in the bin. For the reuse and repair of electrical goods to increase substantially in the UK, some barriers must be overcome. These include people's mistrust of used equipment in terms of whether it will be functional, safe and
22022-510: Was introduced later for devices that had additional capabilities such as video playback. Generally speaking, they are portable, employing internal or replaceable batteries , equipped with a 3.5 mm headphone jack which can be used for headphones or to connect to a boombox , shelf stereo system, or connect to car audio and home stereos wired or via a wireless connection such as Bluetooth . Some players also include radio tuners , voice recording and other features. DAPs appeared in
22176-587: Was launched as Final Cut Pro in April 1999. Key Grip's development also led to Apple's release of the consumer video-editing product iMovie in October 1999. Apple acquired the German company Astarte in April 2000, which had developed the DVD authoring software DVDirector, which Apple repackaged as the professional-oriented DVD Studio Pro , and reused its technology to create iDVD for the consumer market. In 2000, Apple purchased
22330-513: Was launched in 1997 by SaeHan Information Systems , which sold its MPMan F10 player in South Korea in spring 1998. In mid-1998, the South Korean company licensed the players for North American distribution to Eiger Labs, which rebranded them as the EigerMan F10 and F20. The flash-based players were available in 32 MB or 64 MB (6 or 12 songs) storage capacity and had a LCD screen to tell
22484-576: Was more capital than any IPO since Ford Motor Company in 1956. By the end of the day, around 300 millionaires were created, including Jobs and Wozniak, from a stock price of $ 29 per share and a market cap of $ 1.778 billion. In December 1979, Steve Jobs and Apple employees, including Jef Raskin , visited Xerox PARC , where they observed the Xerox Alto , featuring a graphical user interface (GUI). Apple subsequently negotiated access to PARC's technology, leading to Apple's option to buy shares at
22638-437: Was on January 19, 2012, when Apple's Phil Schiller introduced iBooks Textbooks for iOS and iBook Author for Mac OS X in New York City. Jobs stated in the biography Steve Jobs that he wanted to reinvent the textbook industry and education. From 2011 to 2012, Apple released the iPhone 4s and iPhone 5 , which featured improved cameras, an intelligent software assistant named Siri , and cloud-synced data with iCloud;
22792-538: Was released in 1996 by Audio Highway, an American company led by Nathan Schulhof . It could store up to an hour of music, but despite getting an award at CES 1997 only 25 of the devices were made. That same year AT&T developed the FlashPAC digital audio player which initially used AT&T's Perceptual Audio Coder (PAC) for music compression, but in 1997 switched to AAC . At about the same time AT&T also developed an internal Web-based music streaming service that had
22946-577: Was replaced as CEO by Gil Amelio , who was hired for his reputation as a corporate rehabilitator. Amelio made deep changes, including extensive layoffs and cost-cutting. This period was also marked by numerous failed attempts to modernize the Macintosh operating system (MacOS). The original Macintosh operating system ( System 1 ) was not built for multitasking (running several applications at once). The company attempted to correct this by introducing cooperative multitasking in System 5, but still decided it needed
23100-590: Was replaced as CEO by Michael Spindler . Under Spindler, Apple, IBM , and Motorola formed the AIM alliance in 1994 to create a new computing platform (the PowerPC Reference Platform or PReP), with IBM and Motorola hardware coupled with Apple software. The AIM alliance hoped that PReP's performance and Apple's software would leave the PC far behind and thus counter the dominance of Windows. That year, Apple introduced
23254-467: Was replaced by Cook and Jobs became Apple's chairman. Apple did not have a chairman at the time and instead had two co-lead directors— Andrea Jung and Arthur D. Levinson —who continued with those titles until Levinson replaced Jobs as chairman of the board in November after Jobs's death. On October 5, 2011, Steve Jobs died, marking the end of an era for Apple. The next major product announcement by Apple
23408-509: Was succeeded as CEO by Tim Cook . Apple's current product lineup includes portable and home hardware such as the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch , Mac , and Apple TV ; operating systems such as iOS , iPadOS , and macOS ; and various software and services including Apple Pay , iCloud , and multimedia streaming services like Apple Music and Apple TV+ . Apple is one of the Big Five American information technology companies; for
23562-420: Was the top-selling maker in its home country of Singapore. In China, local brands Newman, DEC and Aigo were noted as the top vendors as of 2006. Samsung SPH-M2100 , the first mobile phone with built-in MP3 player was produced in South Korea in August 1999. Samsung SPH-M100 (UpRoar) launched in 2000 was the first mobile phone to have MP3 music capabilities in the US market. The innovation spread rapidly across
23716-508: Was worth US$ 240 billion annually worldwide comprising visual equipment, audio equipment , and games consoles . It was truly global with Asia Pacific having 35% market share, Europe having 31.5%, the US having 23%, and the rest of the world having the rest. Major players in this industry are household names like Sony, Samsung, Philips, Sanyo, and Sharp. Samsung Electronics is part of Samsung . In 2003, combined revenues for Samsung Electronics were $ 55 billion. Samsung Electronics UK
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