Tag: Smartphones

Uncategorized

Holiday amusement: looking back at smartphones

by sbsikesLeave a Comment on Holiday amusement: looking back at smartphones

Decade in Review: SmartPhones

To provide a little intellectual stimulation during, hopefully, your holiday, here are some great end of year highlights on the decade from the sharp journalists at The Brew. Some staggering facts:

  • The average person touches their phone 2600 times per day.
  • About 40% of U.S. adults use their phones primarily to surf the web.
  • Nearly 50% of all internet searches are performed with a smartphone.
  • Advertising on mobile devices accounts for nearly 2/3 of all U.S. digital ad spending.
  • Despite the fact that smartphones are the economic bridge for less developed nations to access commerce, education and information, smartphone growth is slowing by about 4% per year.

dis-rup-shun: It is hard to imagine that the era of the smartphone is in its twilight. Smartphones will be around for the perceivable future, but the white hot center of technology growth and transformation is no longer mobile. Mobile devices and apps have reached saturation. While this marks tougher challenges in selling new phones, it marks a period of more innovative uses of smartphones as companies leverage the mobile platform for new ideas. The result will include innovative things that we will do with smartphones, like the already interesting mobile eye exam from EyeQue, or access to home and office, as already offered by many companies such as VizPin. An innovation I am hoping will be well in place at the end of the next decade is mirroring of our desktop. I would like to be able to sit down at any screen — home, office, airplane, taxi, shared ride/taxi, and have my credentials from my smartphone automatically setup up my desktop, so that my inboxes, my in progress Word or Excel projects would be there, just as I left them a little while ago, so that I can resume my activities. The virtual office concept is one that is in development by Samsung and others, but is not yet in use. I will report on the successful deployment of this concept in the decade in review in 2020, hopefully.

Uncategorized

Netflix ups the content war chest

by sbsikesLeave a Comment on Netflix ups the content war chest

Netflix raises $2 billion for content development

In the latest move in the streaming wars, Netflix has placed a debt offering to develop more original content. This follows an April offering for the same amount. CNBC

dis-rup-shun: Faced with intense competition, Netflix is showing what it’s made of — doubling down for the long haul, intent to win with better content. The question is, can Netflix be a better studio than the studios and drive more viewers to its monthly service than its competitors who have such assets as live sports (ESPN), blockbuster syndicated series such as Friends (AT&T), and a catalog of treasured content (Disney)? Hats off to the scrappy streamer that, when faced with intense competition, is ready to fight. What is certain is that the big winner in the streaming wars will be the consumer who will enjoy boatloads of original content from competing streaming networks, commercial free, for a low monthly fee.

A look back at 10 years of smartphones

CNET surveys technologies of the last decade, including a look at how smartphones have transformed our lives. Recalling earliest Android devices and apps which included fart and virtual lighter apps that made thousands of dollars of revenue every day, the article lists the industries that have been essentially destroyed by smartphones. Those include MP3 players, point and shoot cameras, voice recorders, GPS devices, and almost, except for Apple’s actions, the wristwatch. Hot companies such as Nokia,  Blackberry, HTC and Motorola were not successful making smartphones that people wanted, and are paying dearly today. Chinese smartphone makers are quickly developing lower cost and high functionality devices that will challenge Apple and Samsung’s dominance.

dis-rup-shun: As in every technology hardware introduction (mainframe, mini-computer, PC, modem, game device, etc.), the category transforms consumer habits, sells millions of units, changes the way people work and live, becomes mature, and reaches commodity status. Can Apple and Samsung continue to innovate at a fast enough pace to stay ahead of Huawai, Xiaomi and Oppo? Expect Apple and Samsung to aggressively lead critical innovations such as heart and health tracking, and to greatly improve their smart home offerings as value adds. Whatever the leaders do, the Chinese players will be very close behind.

Shine brings the smart toilet to U.S. bathrooms

Smart toilets, like those in Japan, are able to clean a person, clean itself, heat the seat, measure heart rates, and play music. Despite their popularity in Japan, they have never caught on in North American homes. The Shine Bathroom Assistant seeks to ease the U.S. market into smart toilets through its $99 Echo looking device that sits next to or on the toilet and cleans the bowl after every flush. It also detects water leaks that are common in toilets. TechCrunch

dis-rup-shun: Transitioning our homes to regularly feature smart appliances and devices will sometimes be painful, asking us to put connected devices all around our homes, running power cords across counter tops, floors and tables. A smart toilet like those in Japan that has everything built in sounds quite nice, but an external gadget that further clutters the bathroom does not. After all, cleaning the toilet is one of the easier home chores. Perhaps Shine can increase our interest in a fully integrated smart toilet, but it won’t be at the top of many people’s holiday shopping list.

Hackers find a way to spoil smart speakers

Malicious third parties have developed a number of skills for Alexa and Google Home that eavesdrop or phish for passwords. The skills, disguised as providers of horoscopes or random numbers, keep listening long after they have gone silent, or provide an error message that requests a password. Ars Technica

dis-rup-shun: Simply put, with each new technology innovation will come abuse and bad intentions. The data security and malware fighting industry has a bright future, and will be an excellent vocation for the brightest of technical minds.

Uncategorized

Companies work around Chinese export bans

by sbsikesLeave a Comment on Companies work around Chinese export bans

Does the economic invisible hand know any boundaries?

The Trump tariffs have been aimed at China’s telco giant, Huawei, more than any other Chinese company, with the U.S. prohibiting sales of certain products by U.S. companies and by those of its trade partners. Now microprocessor vendors Intel and Micron have determined that many of their products do not violate the ban, and have resumed selling to Huawei. CNN

dis-rup-shun: The politics behind the trade ban are based on two premises: Chinese companies such as Huawei have violated patents, and the U.S. cannot afford for China, therefore Huawei, to be the leader in 5G technologies. If you are a multinational company based in the U.S. but heavily dependent on selling to all major global companies to meet 2019 sales projections and shareholder expectations, do you pursue all sales opportunities, or do you act in a nationalistic fashion to advance the U.S. 5G agenda? The industry leaders have spoken.

The smartphone notification dilemma

Smartphone apps are now providing as many as 73 notifications per day to average users, or roughly every 15 minutes of awake time. App researchers consider if our society should develop appropriate norms for the number of messages we receive and then expect tech providers to conform, or will people continue to have to make constant decisions about when they choose to interrupt their actions, conversations and thoughts. Wired

dis-rup-shun: Smartphone etiquette continues to be uncharted, and given the legitimate business messaging that occurs on the smartphone via Slack, Teams, WeeChat, SMS, iMessage, LinkedIn, and email, to name a few, banning smartphone usage in the conference room is doubtful. Blending attention at home with work alerts, or at work with personal alerts is a skill that must be mastered for success in both domains. A smartphone free zone, meeting, or experience will be transformational to those that get to experience it.

Air traffic control system getting prepared for drones

Raytheon is the company that develops tracking technology for the U.S. air traffic control system. It has signed an agreement with AirMap, a company that maintains the largest unmanned aircraft tracking network, in order to integrate drone tracking into its commercial and military aircraft tracking system. Airmap has $43 million in funding and currently works in the Czech Republic, Japan, Switzerland, and the United States. ZDNet

dis-rup-shun: The rate of drone innovation is outpacing regulation, such that effective delivery networks will be ready before regulators are. As an important global infrastructure provider, Raytheon will help bring commercial drone usage to market in the next half decade.

Selling school assets for better wireless

A national dilemma is brewing as spectrum once reserved for educational institutions and often unused may be auctioned off for 5G development by large carriers. Much of the Educational Broadband Service has remained unused, however some school systems have leased the spectrum to carriers who have generated revenue from the assets. Critics of the resale plan are concerned that the sale of spectrum will still not help with the problem of serving rural residents who remain without high speed broadband facilities. Wired

dis-rup-shun: Rural broadband infrastructure is simply a cost that no one wants to bear, as the economics will never work. Spectrum licenses should be sold with the requirement that the buyer fund or directly supply some portion of rural infrastructure to get the job done. If rural communities have access to leading-edge communications infrastructure, workers can reverse migrate from cities and relieve rising cost of living pressures.