Don’t take my word for it, the next big thing will always be the user-centered device…

Electronic News sat down to discuss the future of consumer electronics with David Milne CEO of Wolfson Microelectronics; Michael Maia, VP of Marketing at Portal Player; Jarreth Solomon, director of technology at Lexar Media; and Allen Leibovitch, semiconductors program manager at International Data Corp. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. The [full article can be read here->http://www.reed-electronics.com/electronicnews/article/CA604106.html]

Solomon: …What made the iPod take off was that it was a very easy system to use. It came bundled with an iTunes package and it was a very attractive user interface. That’s one of the things consumers are looking at now. As new products come out, the user interface has to be easy to use in order to be mass adopted.

Maia: That is the critical thing. If you hit that nail on the head, you’ve got a winner.

Solomon: Yes. Take a look at Kodak. It very recently took a leader position in the digital camera space because of the Kodak EasyShare. You plug your camera into a docking station, push a button and it prints. You don’t have to deal with Photoshop or adjusting colors; 80 percent of the population out there doesn’t have that kind of expertise or the time to do that.