About this blog

Photo Jun 16, 21 42 41

This is the personal blog of consumer technology analyst Jan Dawson, founder and chief analyst at Jackdaw Research, which covers consumer technology in a broad sense. The title – Beyond Devices – refers to the fact that, while much of the coverage of the consumer technology space is fixated on devices, it’s actually a much more complex picture. Ultimately, consumers in their digital lives want two things: communications and content. That requires other things, including devices, but also connectivity and cloud services in the back end.

Devices are the endpoints on which consumers engage in communications and consume (and to a lesser extent create) content. As such, they’re crucial to the consumer digital lifestyle, but I’d argue that the hardware itself is secondary both to the software than runs on it, and to the services that enable it all to function. As such, this blog is about devices, yes, but it’s also about the world beyond devices, and everything else that makes our digital lives as consumers interesting and fulfilling. This post is an overview of the theoretical framework behind the blog.

I hope you enjoy this blog, and would love to hear from you with any feedback, about opportunities to work together, briefings or anything else. I allow comments by default on new posts, but try to keep things civil and constructive.