End is near for holdouts

Even as fanatic customers can be counted on to line up outside the Apple store for the latest iphone, there are still lots of people who don’t use a smartphone at all.

For that matter, there are still plenty of happy owners of tube televisions, rotary dial telephones, film cameras, fax machines, typewriters and cassette tape players.

The accelerating pace of disruption means more and more products are facing an early retirement.

But even as computers, electronics and health products move quickly from must-haves to museum artifacts, a small but loyal following often carries a torch for the old stuff, sometimes out of nostalgia, sometimes from sheer stubbornness. For them, familiar and functioning technologies are good enough.

In some cases the devotion of the laggards can cause major headaches. When the market for outmoded products shrinks, most manufacturers just stop making them.

No surprise, research has found legacy customers are largely older consumers who long ago gave up

Some technology dinosaurs need a push.

trying to keep up with the latest and greatest. Many are perfectly happy with worse and more expensive products; perhaps even take pride in still knowing how to use them. But legacy customers are often wrong about the costs and benefits of embracing new products and services.

Public and private efforts to overcome that perception are crucial for two important reasons. The first is that the resistors are wrong - the internet has become the starting point for government services, news, employment, entertainment and, increasingly, health care and education. Life without it is increasingly and unnecessarily isolated.

The second is that non-adopters ultimately cost more to serve. Printing information is increasingly a waste of scarce resources as digital alternatives continue to get better and cheaper.

To overcome the inertia of legacy customers, it may be appropriate for governments to step in. At the other end of the life cycle, some technology dinosaurs need a push. Here, regulators can serve as a catalyst, providing the final nudge for legacy customers.

Once it was clear that smart LEDS would become better and cheaper than inefficient incandescent lightbulbs, for example, governments around the world began passing laws banning production of the older technology. The time for being a technology holdout is over. – Washington Post