10 technologies on their way to the scrap heap

These days, personal electronics research moves so fast that even the most sophisticated, tricked-out gadget sold this holiday season will look like the equivalent of an outmoded rotary-dial phone by then and there year.

CTV.ca, along with innovation expert Kris Abel, looked at the electronics and gadgets that are being pushed into obscurity by smarter and snazzier devices. Here's our list of Dead Tech Walking:

Sales of camcorders and pocket cameras have been plummeting in recent years, as BlackBerrys and smartphones take their place. And why not, when cellphones can come with 12-megapixel cameras that take snaps nearly as good as what a pocket camera can do.

As for camcorders, digital cameras began eating up that market years ago; however smartphones are going furthermore. There are as well now tiny video cameras that you can wear on your ear like a Bluetooth device. Some even double as a Bluetooth, and can connect to your smartphone.

True, the options and capabilities of the cameras in our phones are not as sophisticated as a digital SLR or camcorder. Their storage is as well limited, as is their battery life. Now you can't beat a camera that you can just slip into your pocket -- or use to call your friend. And with phones continuing to evolve, their ability to take pictures will only get better.

Just like cameras and camcorders, smartphones are taking over the MP3 music player business too. Even Apple has become a victim of its own success after a fashion, as sales of its iPhone and iPad are sucking away sales of its iPod music players. IPod sales peaked in the U.S. in 2008, one year afterwards the iPhone emerged, and have been dropping ever since.

Some suggest that with their low price point compared to a smartphone, there is after all a viable market for iPods. That's likely true, now with the music industry changing every month, we won't be surprised to see the iPod completely pushed out before long.

If you haven't but jumped on the GPS bandwagon however are in short ready to do so, don't bother. Smartphones are about to make the external GPS navigation device obsolete. Industry experts say smartphones have already stolen away a lot of the GPS market, especially since Google introduced Android, an operating system that extends Google Maps to phones. Nokia, too, began giving away its own navigation software, Ovi Maps, this year to its smartphone users.

Berg Insight, a Swedish technology company that tracks the navigation industry, estimates that sales of personal navigation devices will likely peak in 2011, previously beginning to decline. Industry leaders Garmin and TomTom are said to be fighting back, building in-dash navigators for automakers like Renault, Mazda and Fiat and improving real-time navigation. Now once again, the evolving smartphone looks poised to steamroll over GPS devices, sending them to the scrapheap.

Accelerating world of instant communication

"In an accelerating world of instant communication, answering machines and voicemail services however seem unacceptably slow and formal," says Abel.

These days -- for both personal and business communications -- most of us are choosing email, Facebook or Twitter to get our message across. Sure, there are plenty of incidents when a text message simply can't replace a phone call. Nevertheless if it's a message we need to deliver fast, more of us are doing it through text. Actually, we seem to be forgetting about our answering machine altogether, says Abel.

E-readers have only been around for about three years so far, however the problem is they are inherently limited: they have only the ability to download and read books. Tablets in return offer Internet connectivity. That gives them the potential for unlimited interactivity. Sure, many consider tablets clunky and overpriced, and the selection at this stage is slim. Yet the tablet market appears poised to explode and that means prices will come down.

Isn't it annoying that every cellphone and gadget you've ever owned needs its own charger? "Thankfully, the industry has managed to get its act at the same time," says Abel. "Today, most mobile devices use the common micro-USB connection to draw power, making it easy to borrow, replace, or find the right cable, even in an emergency."

The GSMA mobile phone industry association promised last year that its 17 phone operators and handset makers will standardize chargers by 2012 for most phones.

With any luck, charging cables themselves will become obsolete before long enough, with the full advent of wireless charging pads. Some charging pads are on the market nevertheless, however have been confined to recharging just smartphones. New devices are on the horizon that will allow nearly any device to be charged wirelessly.

Some speculate that "cloud computing" and remote storage services that allow users to back up data over the Internet, like Carbonite and Mozy, will before long take the place of computer hard drives, or even external storage devices like flash drives. Now Abel isn't so sure.

"Chances are if you ask someone for the time, they'll glance at their cellphone instead of their wrist," says Abel. "Travellers who are too impatient to try to figure out or even trust a hotel's alarm clock, are however more likely to use their smartphones to wake themselves up with customized sounds."

Calendars too are growing dusty from misuse, as many of us mark our appointments in our cellphone or email calendars. Since there's however ways to sync up our calendars with all our devices and all our family members, the days of reminding ourselves to "pencil in" appointments onto paper calendars are numbered.

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Great article...we are by all means in the midst of some serious changes. Can't wait until they standardize on the power connections....does Apple know this is going to happen? :)