The list, put together by the brains over at B2B office equipment etailer (so they would know) Pixmania-pro, is based on historical and current sales data and pinpoints the products in danger of extinction in 2011.
- CDs – Expect to see them struck right off the office-stationery list within the next 12 months;
- Memory sticks – The CD’s successor; despite their being 100m USB sticks in circulation in offices and homes up and down the country, advancements in data streaming and remote-file storage is rapidly starting to replace USB storage devices;
- Rolodexes – Victim of the outlook address book, then mobile phone, now the smartphone;
- Personal diaries – Victim of the smartphone;
- Calculators – Victim of the smartphone;
- Desk phones – Who needs a clunky desk phone when you can do everything from your mobile? Sales of desk phones at Pixmania-pro have fallen by 90 per cent since 2001;
- Waste paper bins – as companies develop an environmental conscience and adopt greener working practices, employers are replacing individual bins with designated refuse and recycling points;
- Shredders – the same environmentally savvy employers and employees are printing less, so shredding less;
- Mobile water coolers – largely being replaced by stationary devices, plumbed into an office’s mains water supply and saving firms a fortune; and
- Desk-top hard drives – once a common sight on desks, towering over employees or lurking under desks, the arrival of tablet computers, combined with the increasing use of cloud networks is expected to spell the end for these monsters.
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