Make it simpler is the take-home message for companies that want to sell more technology products in 2007, two outlooks for the year suggest.

Deloitte, the consulting firm, said Monday that many consumers return tech products, not because they don't work, "but rather due to flawed design." Users get frustrated and give up, the company said.

"Companies that focus on minimizing product complexity may achieve greater success than competitors boasting superior, but less accessible, technology," Deloitte said.

IDC, another international consultant, reached much the same conclusion in its outlook, released earlier.

Manufacturers have previously targeted innovators and early adopters, who are more savvy than average consumers, but now "the traditional approach of over-engineering products and creating 'feature bloat' will need to be curbed."

Successful sellers will make it easy for consumers, IDC said, by facilitating the transfer of videos from computer to TV or "simplifying and demystifying backup storage for personal photo, music and videos files."

As well as simplicity, Deloitte suggested that the hottest new technologies may be a combination of existing products.

"Products and services that address consumers' needs rather than engineers' whims are likely to be more successful," such as the MP3 — a combination of compression technology, digital memory and processors, all of which existed independently before the format became popular.

Other clips from the technological future:

• IDC is predicting that the number of cellphones in Canada will surpass the number of landlines this year, a year ahead of previous predictions. "We predict that it will drive a new wave of mobility applications, services, and revenue streams."
• Cellphone competition, already intense over services, will shift to price, IDC said. There could even be a "price war."
• Google will deliver fewer but more interesting products, IDC said, citing Marissa Mayer, Google vice-president, search products and user experience, who told Time magazine that: "Users aren't going to remember our 50-plus products. They'll remember three to five. We need more features and fewer products."
• Deloitte predicted that "power scavenging" — making energy for portable devices from sources like sunlight, changes in temperature, vibrations and  sounds  — could start to show up in consumer devices, although uses in  remote monitoring devices, like sensors in forests to measure temperatures, will be more common.
• Deloitte also said that digital storage could become a problem. A quarter of users have lost music, pictures, movies or files — most often in hard-drive crashes — and consumers could seek better protection.
• And Deloitte said free web-based services bring spam (and its relatives, SPIM for spam over instant messaging and SPIT for spam over internet telephones), so consumers may be willing to pay to avoid the advertising.