Strategic Intelligence: Consumer Electronics Sector Scorecard Q3 2024 Update

The past year has seen the likes of Apple, Google, and Microsoft announce plans to introduce AI features on consumer devices. Apple has started rolling out Apple Intelligence features to iPhone users, marking its biggest push to date into consumer AI with a privacy-first approach. However, reports have surfaced that the incomplete suite of tools is underwhelming, with users facing long waitlists and finding that capabilities are similar to those of competitors, which were released much earlier. While it is still early in the product life cycle, hopes that Apple Intelligence may have transitioned consumer AI out of the so-called demo phase have fallen flat. The companies designing interfaces for consumer devices must push for quality above all to ensure that users find utility in AI tools.

The weighting of the ESG theme in the thematic screen of the analyst’s consumer electronics sector scorecard has increased from 10% to 15%, reflecting the growing impact of e-waste on the environment. The EU has introduced legislation to combat e-waste generation. However, generative AI, already under scrutiny for its massive energy usage, requires cutting-edge hardware, both on-device and in data centers. This has led to expectations that AI development will exponentially increase e-waste levels. Companies with strong e-waste management policies rank highly in the consumer electronics scorecard. For example, Sony, which tops the scorecard, has its Take Back program, which offers free recycling of unwanted Sony products.

Scope

• This sector scorecard provides a top-down, comprehensive outlook for the key players in the consumer electronics sector over the next two years, based on the key themes set to transform their industry landscape.

Reasons to Buy

• Companies that invest in the right themes become success stories. Those that miss the important themes in their industry end up as failures.
• The analyst’s thematic research ecosystem is a single, integrated global research platform that provides an easy-to-use framework for tracking all themes across all companies in all sectors. It has a proven track record of identifying the important themes early, enabling companies to make the right investments ahead of the competition, and secure that all-important competitive advantage.
• At the analyst, we have developed a unique thematic methodology for ranking all major companies in all major sectors based on their relative strength in the big themes that are impacting their industries.
• Our thematic engine tags over 180 million data items across six alternative data sets-patents, jobs, deals, filings, social media, and news-to themes. The vast datasets within our thematic engine help our analysts to produce sector scorecards that identify the companies best placed to succeed in a future filled with multiple disruptive threats.