Miniaturisation is linked to innovation and technological progress where similar performance can be offered using less material. It is driven by the effort to make things smaller. Less material use is usually universally welcomed. Shrinking products tends to assist in shedding weight, packing more in to the same space, making products more transportable and user friendly, and overall enables continued use of original material. A good example is moving from the bulky mobile phone of the 1990’s to an Apple watch today that can be used as a phone. Also, the example of the Apple watch shows that miniaturisation has limitations, as phones below a certain size are not user-friendly.
There is a discussion out there on whether or not miniaturisation is part of ‘material losses’, aligning it with the world of substitution. While trends can be driven by technological innovations and cost concerns, the possibility of miniaturisation, using the original material but less of it, supports use of the original material for the longer-term.
In fact, OEMs would rather cut costs via miniaturisation than substituting. This is because the original material was selected because it is the best choice for the purpose. If the best material can be used while reducing costs, this enables less experimentation, and lower risk testing an alternative.
The option of utilising miniaturisation is good news for materials use, especially in growing applications. Material losses through miniaturisation tend to be offset by demand growth for an application – while use per unit is miniaturised, selling more units increases the overall demand. For example, mobile phones use much less material compared with 20-30 years ago, but the rapid rise in the number of mobile phone users offsets total material loss.
Measuring future miniaturisation and identifying miniaturisation trends is an exciting task, MM Markets has a wealth of experience in this field.
Thank you, and until next time!
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