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government regulators get their vehicles and
laws completed first?
Though 2015 set a record for auto sales, low
fuel prices sent sales of electric cars down 17%
from 2014. While new plug-in electric and hy-
brid models continue to be introduced, consum-
ers are reluctant to pay the $8K to $10K premi-
um for these vehicles with gas prices so low.
Only 400,000 out of the 1 million electric vehi-
cle sales goal set by the Obama administration
by 2015 had been achieved.
Going forward, consumers can expect more
electronics in their cars and trucks and more
electric cars in general, especially if oil prices
increase sharply. If fuel prices stay low, auto
makers will be conflicted, having to choose be-
tween selling bigger vehicles that consumers
want and smaller, high mileage gas and electric
cars that allow them to meet the much tougher
2025 average fuel economy standards. Though
adding electronics tends to increase reliability,
look for more recalls as the complexity of the
products increases. Autonomous vehicle devel-
opment has become “too big to fail”; with so
many players in the market, the cars could be
available in just a few years, and then the regu-
lations will have to be resolved. This will be
great for the disabled and inebriated, but dev-
astating for bus, taxi and truck drivers.
Drones. The FAA (Federal Aviation Admin-
istration) finally released some regulations for
small unmanned aircraft or drones in 2015, re-
quiring registration for some and specifying
flight rules. As with their wheeled autonomous
cousins, regulations have not kept up with the
technology and popularity of personal drones.
Aerial firefighting efforts for wildfires last sum-
mer were interfered with by drones in a number
of cases. A number of new laws relating to
drones were proposed in California but none
were enacted. Meanwhile, small quadcopters
continue to drop in price and become more
available. Fry’s has several aisles devoted to
drones and their accessories.
Personal drones usually have a lot of autono-
mous flight capabilities, but most still require
some human control, as with a radio-controlled
plane. A new product to be released this sum-
mer called Lily promises to make drone photog-
raphy easy for everyone (www.lily.camera).
This quadcopter with built-in camera is very
9
easy to use; it is launched by simply throwing it
in the air. It tracks and follows you via a small
tracking device and takes video and stills. It is
in pre-sales online for $800. This kind of de-
vice could be the next Go-Pro Hero of action
cameras. If the price could come down further,
it could be a big hit.
Computers. Sales of laptop and desktop
computers fell slightly in 2015, continuing a
trend started in 2012 when tablets began to
compete with them. Tablet sales rose for sev-
eral years, but were flat last year, probably be-
cause by then almost everyone that wanted a
tablet had finally gotten one. Microsoft’s re-
lease of the Windows 10 operating system was
supposed to spur sales of new computers, but
by the end of 2015, it had only a 10% market
share (less than Windows 8.1 at 10.3%, XP at
11% and Windows 7 at 56%). This was in spite
of Microsoft offering it for free to existing Win-
dows 7 and 8 users. For tablets, 57% used the
Android OS at the end of 2015, while iOS had
35% of the market.
The main competition for computers and tab-
lets at this point is the smart phone. While
computers (desktops and notebooks com-
bined) had around 300,000 shipped in 2015,
and tablets an additional 300,000 units, nearly
2 million mobile phones were shipped world-
wide. While smart phones and tablets may be
great for web surfing and emails, most file cre-
ation work is still best done on a conventional
PC, with a larger screen and full keyboard. Tax
return filing season is here, and while a few
may file using a tablet, I would guess the ma-
jority of filers will do so on a desktop or laptop
PC (with practically none on a smart phone). I
can’t see editing spreadsheets or writing large
documents on a smart phone. Even online
shopping is more difficult on a smart phone’s
small screen. Thus I feel computers will contin-
ue to hold their percentage of market share for
quite a few years into the future. It will also
take a few years for Windows 10 to become
the most used computer OS, but it will get
there.
Smart Phones. Smart phone sales may
have peaked simply because it is getting hard-
er to find anyone that does not already have
one. There are some that own no computing
devices other than a smart phone, but those
people are primarily content consumers, not
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