A shift in consumer demand for more customizable options may lead to drastic changes in the business models followed by smartphone and electronics OEMs, according to some industry experts. In fact, the trend could ultimately move the manufacturing process away from high-volume throughput and toward shorter lifecycles, with rapidly changing processes designed toward highly customized experiences. Protolabs’ President and Chief Executive Officer Vicki Holt says that research conducted by her company has shown that as many as 86-percent of buyers find that prospect appealing. 62-percent would be willing to go further and pay extra for more customizable options to offset the cost to manufacturers. Those figures are tempered by the fact that more than 60-percent of respondents also said that delivery of the product, following customization, needs to happen within three days or less. Meanwhile, as many as half of stateside millennials would be happier with an increase in the frequency with which they could upgrade their devices – compared to as few as 26-percent for older age groups.
That presents a challenge that the market is now going to have to try and fill in order to keep consumers happy, Holt says. Moreover, the changes enacted by manufacturers will primarily be in the supply chain. A lot of the challenge can be met by simply diversifying products and tying the ordering process into user-facing software tools allowing a set range of customizations. By connecting those to the factory floor via “digital manufacturing,” presumably tied in with an automated or A.I.-based system to manage the workflow, the speed of delivery can be ramped up. The solution would also solve problems associated with supply chains since it would increase the number of components ordered. It’s not all that different from how phone manufacturers offer different RAM and storage configurations or variations of smartphones that meet different target audiences of the Android spectrum.
Driving the changes, meanwhile, is the rapid growth of the industry itself. That growth has led to a stiff competition and accelerated upgrade processes for components. Smartphones go from brand new to obsolete much more quickly than previous technologies have. As a result, those types of customization are also the most desirable. Buyers want to customize storage capacity and RAM, as well as the processor that ships with their device and that SoC’s clock speeds. Beyond that, they want a range of options when it comes to size and shape of their devices. Due to the fairly standard sizes and shapes of the components used, that’s also likely to be the easiest customization to offer. So it shouldn’t be too surprising to see manufacturers begin to shift away from traditional business models and offer more personalized devices for users moving forward.