With the first baby boomers turning 65 this year, companies in the youth-centric consumer electronics business are turning more attention to older customers.
This gray-tech trend covers everything from video games for exercising older minds and bodies, such as Nintendo's BrainAge and Wii Fit, to Skype video conferencing for seniors to interact with their kids and grandkids.
In some cases, general-interest tech products will be marketed differently to senior citizens. In other cases, new products will be developed specifically with older people in mind.
Gray tech has moved beyond those telephones with ridiculously large buttons for seniors with poor eyesight. Today's seniors want many of the same cool tech products prized by younger consumers.There's more focus on gray tech because it's a growing market with big spending power, analysts say.
Own 77% Of Assets
The 78 million baby boomers born between 1946 and 1964 make up 28% of the U.S. population and own 77% of all financial assets, says Mary Furlong, president of Mary Furlong & Associates, a marketing firm geared to helping clients target seniors and baby boomers. The number of Americans age 65 and older will double by 2030.
Communications and engagement technologies for older people will be a $20 billion business in North America by 2020, says Laurie Orlov, an industry analyst with Aging in Place Technology Watch.
"There is a perception that there is an older consumer ahead of us," Orlov said.
Some consumer electronics vendors are taking a "designed for all" approach to their products, which can be customized for older people and other users, Furlong says.
Apple's iPad is a good example of a mainstream product with huge potential for seniors, she says.
"The iPad is the top product for all people 50-plus," she said. "The user interface is so easy. And for anyone with vision issues, the text size can be changed quite easily."
Older consumers are finding the iPad much easier to use than a personal computer, she says. The iPad's touch-screen display and big icons beat using a computer mouse and having to find and click or double-click PC programs. Plus, a tablet can sit on your lap, she says.
"What's so magical about the iPad is that you can be 90 and find nine applications to use, or be a child and find a bunch of applications," Furlong said.
Baby boomers are comfortable using technology because they've used it in the workplace, she says. Many will continue working because they don't have enough money saved for retirement. So they'll need to keep up on the latest technologies to stay relevant.
Baby boomers in many cases are caring for their parents and will be the ones buying tech products for them, analysts say.
Clarity, a unit of Plantronics, sells most of its home phones for older people with hearing loss and to their baby boomer children.
A senior's hearing loss "is worse for the people around them" than for the senior, said Carsten Trads, president of Clarity. "They're the ones who have to listen to the television turned up so loud you could hear it from five blocks away."
Phone/Hearing Aid
Clarity phones have built-in digital hearing aids.
The older generation would rather buy a poorly made corded phone for $10 at Wal-Mart than pay $150 for one of Clarity's phones, Trads says. But their adult children see things differently.
"We've definitely seen an uptick in business," Trads said.
One of the most important services for seniors today is Skype video calling, Orlov says. With a webcam and the Skype software, seniors can visit with children and grandchildren who live far away.
Readeo, a Chicago-based company, offers a service that lets grandparents read children's books to their grandkids on video calls. The shared reading experience is called BookChat. It lets participants see, hear, read and interact as if they were in the same room.
"Children will sit still longer for having a book read to them than for a Skype visit," Orlov said. "We're talking 3- and 4-year-olds."
Like the iPad, Microsoft's Kinect sensor control for the Xbox 360 could be a mass market product with applications for seniors.
The Kinect sensor is mostly used to play Xbox games by waving, kicking, punching and jumping. But the sensor, which detects people and their body motions and voice commands, could be used to control the television in the future. Already, people can operate Netflix video streaming using Kinect.
"Kinect is a transformative user interface," Orlov said. "The move to gesture (interfaces) is a very exciting development."
Baby boomers also are spending more of their free time on technology-related hobbies, Furlong says. That includes social networking related to particular clubs and interests or online genealogy through services like Ancestry.com.
"Even something as silly as dating, one in three boomers are going to be alone at some point either through divorce or loss of a partner and they're going to be online dating in record numbers," she said.
Household cleaning-robot maker iRobot sees elderly consumers as a key opportunity ahead.
"It's a huge market for us," said iRobot CEO Colin Angle.
IRobot makes the Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner and the Scooba floor-washing robot. Both robots help people who are physically unable to clean their homes properly, including the elderly, Angle says.
The senior market is definitely a big opportunity for consumer electronics makers. But they don't have to target it specifically as long as they make their products easy to use and customizable.
"Consumer electronics companies still pretty much design for the young," Orlov said. "It's just that (all ages) like easy-to-use devices."
Disclosure: I own Apple and Microsoft.
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