Consumer electronics

Consumer electronics, also known as home electronics, are electronic devices intended for everyday household use. Consumer electronics include those used for entertainment, communications, and recreation. Historically, these products were referred to as "black goods" in American English due to many products being housed in black or dark casings. This term is used to distinguish them from "white goods", which are meant for housekeeping tasks, such as washing machines and refrigerators. In British English, they are often called "brown goods" by producers and sellers. Since the 2010s, this distinction has been absent in big box consumer electronics stores, whose inventories include entertainment, communication, and home office devices, as well as home appliances.

Radio broadcasting in the early 20th century brought the first major consumer product, the broadcast receiver. Later products included telephones, televisions, calculators, cameras, video game consoles, mobile phones, personal computers, and MP3 players. In the 2010s, consumer electronics stores often sold GPS, automotive electronics (vehicle audio), video game consoles, electronic musical instruments (e.g., synthesizer keyboards), karaoke machines, digital cameras, and video players (VCRs in the 1980s and 1990s, followed by DVD players and Blu-ray players). Stores also sold smart light fixtures, network devices, camcorders, and smartphones. Some of the modern products being sold include virtual reality goggles, smart home devices that connect to the Internet, streaming devices, and wearable technology.

In the 2010s, most consumer electronics were based on digital technologies and increasingly merged with the computer industry, in a trend often referred to as the consumerization of information technology. Some consumer electronics stores also began selling office and baby furniture. Consumer electronics stores may be physical "brick and mortar" retail stores, online stores, or combinations of both. Annual consumer electronics sales were expected to reach $2.9 trillion by 2020. The sector is part of the electronics industry, which is, in turn, driven by the semiconductor industry.

For its first fifty years, the phonograph turntable did not use electronics; the needle and sound horn were purely mechanical technologies. However, in the 1920s, radio broadcasting became the basis of the mass production of radio receivers. The vacuum tubes that had made radios practical were used with record players as well. This was to amplify the sound so that it could be played through a loudspeaker. Television was invented soon after, but remained insignificant in the consumer market until the 1950s.

The first working transistor, a point-contact transistor, was invented by John Bardeen and Walter Houser Brattain at Bell Labs in 1947, which led to significant research in the field of solid-state semiconductors in the early-1950s. The invention and development of the earliest transistors at Bell led to transistor radios, in turn promoting the emergence of the home entertainment consumer electronics industry starting in the 1950s. This was largely due to the efforts of Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo (now Sony) in successfully commercializing transistor technology for a mass market, with affordable transistor radios and then transistorized television sets.

Integrated circuits (ICs) followed when manufacturers built circuits (usually for military purposes) on a single substrate using electrical connections between circuits within the chip itself. IC technology led to more advanced and cheaper consumer electronics, such as transistorized televisions, pocket calculators, and by the 1980s, video game consoles and personal computers affordable for regular middle-class families.

Beginning in the 1980s and continuing through the early 2000s, many consumer electronics, such as televisions and stereo systems, underwent digitization. The introduction of compact discs (CDs) and personal computers during this period signalled a broader shift as digital computer technology and digital signals were increasingly integrated into consumer devices. This transformation significantly altered their functionality and led to improved performance, such as enhanced image quality in televisions. These advancements were largely driven by Moore’s Law, which enabled rapid increases in processing power and reductions in cost and size.

In 2004, the consumer electronics industry was worth US $240 billion annually worldwide, comprising visual equipment, audio equipment, and games consoles. The industry became global, with Asia Pacific having a 35% market share, Europe having 31.5%, the US having 23%, and the rest of the world owning the remainder. Major players in this industry are household names like Sony, Samsung, Philips, Sanyo, and Sharp.