Five Tech Products That’ll Be Dead in Five Years

Digital technology has made a lot of things obsolete in the past 20 years, but it's about to get worse.  "Time" magazine has a list of five tech products that will probably die out in the next five years.

1.  DVD and Blu-ray players.  Online streaming will probably become the only way to see movies at home.  Netflix and iTunes are killing the market for plastic discs, the same way Napster and iTunes did for music.

2.  Standalone GPS units.  Every smartphone can do what a GPS unit does.  And now most cars are sold with GPS built-in.  The market for standalone GPS units from companies like Garmin and TomTom has declined more than 15% per year since 2008.

3.  Point-and-shoot cameras.  Smartphone cameras now do just about everything a regular digital camera can do.  So camera companies are phasing out all their low-end models, to focus on SLRs and compact system cameras like the Nikon 1.

4.  Car keys.  Most new cars don't have them anymore.  But in the next few years, everything in most cars will be controlled by smartphone apps . . . including the locks.

5.  Dial-up Internet.  Apparently about 3% of Americans actually still use dial-up.  But broadband and satellite Internet are quickly growing to cover the last few places where they still don't reach.  In five years, everyone should have something better than dial-up.