Consumers to turn into armchair gadget designers?

Apple's style gurus should watch their backs because the killer-gadgets of the future will be devised by none other than Joe Public, say analysts.

Within five years its the customers who could be whipping up the latest gadgets from their living room chairs, according to a report by analysts the Economist Intelligence Unit.

So-called 'prosumers', a marriage of consumers and producers, will use Web site forums and email to pipe their ideas straight on to company production lines says the report.

About a third of the 661 executives questioned worldwide thought that by 2013 the most innovative ideas would come from customers and more than half thought that consumers would be linked to product design.

Mark Power, chief executive of digital marketing company Concep, said in a statement: "By 2013 customer empowerment will be the norm rather then the exception."

The report also found that executives thought that the outside factors that will have the greatest impact on business between now and 2013 will be technological innovation and political and economic uncertainty.