Every change of the kind noted in the post below from Richard McKinnon (further down this page) has really intersting flow on implications for consumers. Technologies are being designed both in and out of devices. The reason to design "in" is obvious. The reason to design "out" maybe not so. But engineers and marketers are now looking carefuly at duplication of technologies in consumer settings where devices are clustered. This enables considerable const savings in manufacturing to take place as duplication of some key technologies is avoided. This is another aspect of disintermediation that is rapidly changing the consumer device landscape.

For instance, for some people, it is important to have a mobile device that enables both phone calls and email access, which drives the inclusion of a certain chip set, memory etc. For others it is absolutlely unimportant whether their phone has a camera on board, and they want their email on another device to the phone. So these demands drive a possibly different manufacturing spec.

And as we become more pod-centric with all of our music on a hard disc player that is mobile, why would you need a CD - or as it more likely is these days - a DVD drive in your car. What you really need is an amplifier that is Pod-ready.

Denon's new amplifiers have usb ports on them so that you can easily Pod your music through them. How long before some companies provide usb ports on TV's so you can have a multi-use function and play music videos from a hard drive storage device and not have to play them from a DVD?

This sort of of thing is going to push manufacturers to both design in and out some familiar functions in next generation electronics and large ticket consumer products that I believe will have a quite profound effect. Anticipation of the tipping point by marketers could drive us past the tipping point faster - and it is this potential for there to be accelerators that is really fascinating.

It may not save money apparently or initially, but will enable manufacturers to swap into next generation technologies for only an incremental price increase on the front end. So this may mean that product differentiation does not need to come with a huge price.
That could mean in turn that the companies that get it right in terms of understanding how their customers feel about how they consume media for instance will be able to really set the tone both for product differentiation and price in one fell swoop. This will actually drive consumer spending harder beyond the tipping point.  Imagine how people will be able to brag to their friends that the new car that they have just purchased has a hard disk drive that meets all their entertainment needs like a Tivo on steroids and so they don't need a DVD or CD player or even cell phone in the car! They  instead have  Skype, Movies and Music all on the move, perhaps even with a removable memory key that has all the important personal information on it, that enables full personalization of playlists, audio settings, phone book etc...