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Florida Pool Pro
sm
• October 2014
to the Internet, to achieve different penetration levels in US households. It
took decades for the telephone to reach 50 percent of households, beginning
before 1900. It took five years or less for cellphones to accomplish the same
penetration in 1990. As you can see from the chart (Consumption Spreads
Faster Today), innovations introduced more recently are being adopted more
quickly. By analogy, firms with competitive advantages in those areas will
need to move faster to capture those opportunities that present themselves.
This second graph, by Michael DeGusta of MIT’s Technology Review,
presents similar results. It took 30 years for electricity and 25 years for
telephones to reach 10 percent adoption but less than five years for tablet
devices to achieve the 10 percent rate. It took an additional 39 years for
telephones to reach 40 percent penetration and another 15 before they
became ubiquitous. Smart phones have also outpaced nearly any comparable
technology in the leap to mainstream use. It took landline telephones about 45
years to get from 5 percent to 50 percent penetration among U.S. households,
and mobile phones took around seven years to reach a similar proportion of
consumers. Smart phones have gone from 5 percent to 40 percent in about
four years, despite a recession. The only technology that moved as quickly to
the U.S. mainstream was television between 1950 and 1953 and flat screen
adoption has leaped in recent years since introduction.
It’s clear that in many arenas things are indeed speeding up, with more
players and fewer barriers to entry.
W H Y H AV E W E N O T
E M B R A C E D D I G I T A L
TECHNOLOGY MORE FULLY?
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The reasons it has not been more
readily and broadly embraced by the
swimming pool trades and aquatic
facilities management community
are varied. My research indicates
many are still just feeling it out.
Many are not well educated on the
equipment, its operation and its
