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7th September 2010

Small companies hot, smaller gadgets not

• Cambridge Consultants announces results of technology survey to mark its 50th anniversary - revealing insights into future of technology industry and product design

Cambridge Consultants has today announced the results of its recent online survey aimed at discovering attitudes towards past, present and future technological development, which was conducted as part of the company’s 50th anniversary celebrations. Receiving over 1,000 respondents, the research revealed that two out of three people believe that small, fast-growing companies will be responsible for the most influential technologies in the future. This put them way ahead of large, multinational companies.

The Cambridge Consultants survey also revealed that being small isn’t necessarily important in terms of gadgets - reducing the size of devices was a priority for less than 2% of respondents. Making gadgets faster was also a surprisingly low priority for consumers, with less than 5% indicating that it was of high importance. Instead, gadget users would prefer to see technology products capable of solving new problems (with over a third of votes) and become easier to use (27%).

Dr Brian Moon, CEO of Cambridge Consultants, commented, “In the last few years we have seen the most successful products fully exploit both form and function. Indeed, as the insides of gadgets continue to increase in complexity, paradoxically the exteriors become ever simpler. There clearly also remains a strong demand for new and inventive technologies, something that Cambridge Consultants prides itself in developing.”

Other findings showed that almost two thirds of respondents consider the Internet to be the most life-changing invention of the past 50 years. Brian Moon commented, “The Internet, although seen by many as a maturing technology, is actually still in its infancy and we’ve only really scratched the surface on what it can do. The next phase will see the convergence of objects, devices and systems with the internet – a blurring of the lines between online and offline worlds.”

The survey of over 1,000 respondents forms part of the company’s 50th year anniversary celebrations, having been at the forefront of technology innovation since it was founded in 1960. Cambridge Consultants made a donation of £1 for every completed survey to Macmillan Cancer Support.

Established by three Cambridge University graduates in 1960, Cambridge Consultants has grown into a world leading technology development firm, employing over 300 engineers, technologists and scientists at offices in both Cambridge, UK and Boston, USA. The company’s work for both large multinationals and early stage start ups can be seen all around us, from the round tea bag you use to make your morning beverage, to the ground-to-air radio system used to control air traffic in US airspace; and from the Bluetooth chip in your mobile phone, to the ultra low-cost optoelectronics in one of the world’s most successful pregnancy testing kits.

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