Seven Products, Concepts, and Ideas That Won't Exist by 2025

Motley Fool ^ | 08/21/2012 | Sean Williams

[SeekAndFind]

I'm sort of ashamed to admit that Friday night's baseball game between the San Francisco Giants and Colorado Rockies is the inspiration for this article. As a sidebar to the actual game itself, the broadcasters noted that someone had built a replica DeLorean hovercraft and was riding it around McCovey Cove in San Francisco, Calif.

This got me thinking (yes, a replica hovercraft DeLorean inspired me; laugh all you want), what if we could travel into the past, or better yet, into the future to see what products, concepts, and ideas survived and which ones drifted away. Back to the Future II wasn't exactly the best predictor of what the future would be like. According to the movie, in three years we're supposed to have flying cars and a Pepsi is expected to cost close to $50. Neither of those predictions looks even remotely feasible, although I will give the movie credit for correctly predicting a baseball team in Miami.

So today, I'm going to give you my best Doc Brown and highlight seven products, concepts, and ideas that won't exist by the year 2025. I could well be wrong, but these seven things are a long way from hitting 88 MPH and sending themselves back to better times.

Products

• Digital cameras: Come on, you knew there was going to be at least one no-brainer in here! Chances are that if you own a smartphone, the camera in your phone has a higher resolution than the digital camera you own. This is one reason Eastman Kodak bit the dust (one of a dozen may I add) and is another reason why it's crucial to pay attention to camera display sensor companies like OmniVision Technologies (Nasdaq: OVTI  ) that are driving camera innovation in devices from both Apple and Samsung. With new smartphones sporting 8MP cameras, and resolutions increasing yearly, why wouldn't digital cameras go extinct?
• 3-D televisions: Personally, I'm surprised 3-D televisions still exist now, just two years after debuting on the market. Of the seven things listed here, this is the fad of all fads, and is one of the primary reasons why Best Buy (NYSE: BBY  ) , which bet big on 3-D TVs, has been in a downward spiral in recent months. There are plenty of reasons that 3-D TVs are staying out of people's homes, including high price points, the need for ridiculous glasses, and frankly, very little content is currently available in 3-D. Lower 3-D set prices could bring a short revival of sales in the future, but the likelihood of 3-D content expanding dramatically amid already tepid sales makes this technology's survival a long shot.
• Energy drinks: I can almost see teenagers across America, as well as white-collar workers on Wall Street, foaming at the mouth because of this statement. I admit, I'm not an energy drink buyer, period, but I can understand their mass appeal now. What I feel will do them in will be the ever-broadening scope of the Food and Drug Administration. At the moment the FDA is working its way under the tobacco industries' skin and could find its way into regulating the certain aspects of energy drinks including safety, ingredients, and manufacturing, within the next decade. That could be a crushing blow for energy drink giant Monster Beverage (Nasdaq: MNST  ) , which generates more than 90% of its sales from its energy drinks.
• Credit cards: Sure, there will be a die-hard few who live in caves and refuse to relinquish their platinum miles card from their wallet, but the trend over the coming decade will be a move from plastic to near-field communication inspired modes of payment using mobile devices. NFC payments are more secure, quicker, and more convenient for users. Two companies that could benefit in a big way from this movement are Dolby Laboratories (NYSE: DLB  ) and NXP Semiconductors (Nasdaq: NXPI  ) . NXP makes the chips used in NFC-enabled mobile devices while Dolby Labs' subsidiary, Via Licensing, owns all NFC patents. This means big royalties anytime NFC technology is used in a mobile device. Keep your eye on these two names.

Concepts

• United States Post Office: Blame email or blame smartphones, but one way or another the post office is on its way out. The USPS defaulted on a required $5.5 billion payment to the postal workers' pension for the first time in its history earlier this month, and for the third quarter, the USPS lost a staggering $5.2 billion, or $57 million per day. That's an unsustainable government loss that's only expected to widen over the coming years and will prompt whichever party finds itself in office over the next decade to give the USPS the ax. FedEx, UPS, and other shippers have a few years to figure out how to pick up the slack before the USPS tips over from a stiff breeze.
• European Union: All the king's horses and all the king's men, couldn't solve the eurozone debt crisis if they threw everything they've got at it! After years of grossly mismanaging their budgets, Greece has accepted nearly $300 billion in aid from the EU to buoy its collapsing economy, Spain recently accepted $125 billion in aid for its banks, Ireland took $113 billion in aid, and Italy could be on the verge of needing assistance with its lending rates hovering around 6%. EU leaders can continue to sweep these problems further down the road, but at some point these problems are going to flush to the forefront all at once and the EU as we know it will not exist by 2025.

Ideas

• The United States is the pre-eminent superpower: Though some disagree, the United States' days as the world's most important nation are numbered. That doesn't mean the U.S. won't hold its lead in innovation and manufacturing, but China is well on its way to dethroning the U.S. in countless other categories. China already lays claim to the world's leading manufacturing output, energy consumption, and steel usage, and should, based on its current trajectory, easily surpass the U.S. in total GDP, retails sales, and imports by 2025. Simply put, people will be looking toward China to dictate global growth in the future first, not the United States.

Foolish roundup
There you have it -- 1.21 gigawatts of products, concepts, and ideas that are destined for extinction by 2025. Let me and your fellow Fools know your take on the above ideas in the comments section below, as well as other products, concepts, and ideas that could fall by the wayside over the next decade.

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[Einherjar]

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/08/16/is-this-office-supplys-swan-song.aspx

2 of the 3 largest will be gone ?

[Tanniker Smith]

In addition to what others have already said about cameras, let me add that a dedicated camera will always take better pictures than any multi-use gadget of comparable price, and people will want good pictures. And not just professionals and hobbyists.

[ropin71]

I shoot RAW images, camera phones can’t handle RAW format, can they?

[Fledermaus]

I hope not. I have a hard enough time seeing the 2D TV.

[discostu]

Digital cameras aren’t going away, there’s still a large chunk of the population not doing smartphones.

Energy drinks will get tweaked but they’ll still exist. In the end they’re just sugar and caffeine bombs.

Credit cards might change but they’ll still exist.

USPS is in the Constitution, it’s not going away either.

[discostu]

Actually people aren’t buying the 3D TVs, they’re already dead. And the movies are starting to wane. Now if they ever figure out how to do it without glasses all that changes, but so far all the ideas for that are insanely expensive and not terribly practical.

[Jonty30]

I disagree about flash drives. As long as there is information for my eyes only, I will use a flash drive over the cloud. I will also be the last man alive in using software I own over software I have no control over using.

In regards to GPS and encyclopedia, they also will always exist. The physical forms might change, but that doesn’t stop them from existing. My phone has a GPS and the encyclopedia is the internet.

[Jonty30]

3D televisions, without the need for glasses, already exist in the labs and should be out within 5 years.

What is interesting is that television sets are already going beyond 1080p. The first 4k televisions are on the marketplace, for only $30 grand :), but that price will drop quickly.

What is also potentially available and being tested is qled television. Instead of millions of pixelations, we are talking billions of pixelations, with each pixel having the capability of showing the complete visible light spectrum.

[Jonty30]

3D televisions, without the need for glasses, already exist in the labs and should be out within 5 years.

What is interesting is that television sets are already going beyond 1080p. The first 4k televisions are on the marketplace, for only $30 grand :), but that price will drop quickly.

What is also potentially available and being tested is qled television. Instead of millions of pixelations, we are talking billions of pixelations, with each pixel having the capability of showing the complete visible light spectrum.

[dfwgator]

Porn will never have looked so real.

[Jonty30]

There are some things i don’t want to see as real as possible.

[discostu]

The quantity of things that “should be out in 5 years” for the last 30 or 40 years is epic (cure for cancer, viable solar power, half a dozen replacements for gas). Until it’s actually out I never believe them. One of the big problems all the no glasses 3D has is view angle, in the average American living room most people don’t sit in the sweet spot, so the 3D has to look good on a wide range. Most of the glassed 3D doesn’t look good in a wide range. Meanwhile the market is showing people just aren’t that into it, 3D does OK in theaters but not great, and in TV sales was dead until they turned into a “standard” feature, now people get it and don’t use it.

[Chode]

i guess the boy never tried to hook up a telephoto zoom lens to a camera phone then...

[MrEdd]

I don't think he is wrong at all on cameras.

He just forgot to mention one of the innovations that goes with the switch from film to digital: the development of new flat surface lens mounting systems.

This lets you have an array of real optical lenses to gather the image for your phone or tablet's sensors.

With a big enough sensor, eventually this will get you to what you can do with a DSLR.

[discostu]

As long as USB ports are faster than ethernet ports the flash drive is alive and well. It takes me 10 to 20 minutes to move 4GB around the network at work (depending on how many other people are at work distracting the routers from my important stuff), 2 minutes to move it from my computer to a flash drive. And that’s with both ends in house, if one end is the internet now you’re talking closer to an hour to put 4GB in one direction then an hour on my destination computer, again vs 2 minutes on the flash. And I’m just at USB2, when I make the jump to USB3...

[Jonty30]

A working standard is certainly an issue. The other main problem in this area is that the although people have the technology to receive these wonderful displays, broadcasters are not ready to upgrade to deliver on these wonderful displays. Many broadcasters just upgraded to 1080p and are not quite willing to go to 4k yet, not until their costs for 1080p have been paid for.

[discostu]

Broadcasters were looking like they were ready to make the jump to 3D, then 3D TV sales tanked.

[wally_bert]

The idea of a true macro lens apparently never registered either. I like my 100 mm fixed.

[wally_bert]

There could be numerous opportunities for Adobe After Effects people to fix all those glaring imperfections.

[Chode]

bingo, different tools for different jobs cause one size does NOT fit all...