Race for the smart Home

Alexa more likely than Apple.... 

SouthChinaMorningPost

For the smart home, the key developer partners are the makers of household devices ranging from lighting systems to refrigerators. There are currently about 250 devices that are certified to work with Alexa, and Amazon has encouraged rapid development of third-party applications with its open-systems approach and even financial incentives for some partners.

Apple’s Homekit, by contrast, has about 100 certified devices. And the reasons behind that gap show both the risks and the potential rewards of Apple’s approach.

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The devices have to be made in special factories that are certified by Apple. A confidential Apple document obtained by Reuters lists more than 800 of these factories, but only a few specialise in home automation products.

Developers can ask Apple to certify an unlisted factory they want to use. But the limited selection means that device makers can’t always get the best prices or work with their preferred factories.

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Alexa, by contrast, only requires smart home companies to write software code and submit it to Amazon for review. There are no special chips. To earn the “Works with Alexa” label -which isn’t required to function with Alexa but does help promote products on Amazon’s website - startups must have their products physically tested. Amazon does allow that to happen in a third-party lab, however.

Once those certifications are in hand, Amazon says it will decide whether or not a device gets the “Works with Alexa” label within 10 days.

Mems and Sensors Blog -- Microvision Contribution

In the right place at the right time! 

Mems and Sensors Blog -- More at the source.

Cool consumer products made possible by MEMS/Sensors

Contributed by MicroVision, Inc. (January 3, 2017)

We live in an always-on world, and thanks to the myriad of MEMS and sensors in a myriad of products today, we are granted unrestricted access to the technologies that amplify and simplify our daily lives. MEMS-mirror based Laser Beam Scanning solutions, such as those enabled by MicroVision’s PicoP® scanning technology, can offer projected display and interactivity capabilities that could turn today’s technologies into tomorrow’s innovations.

Take for instance the smart home assistant – a device that is part of a market expected to reach more than $30 billion and a household penetration rate of over 60% by 2021*. In the future, we could see these hubs responding to more than just our voices, but also our hand gestures.

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Here’s a further look into how MEMS-based Laser Beam Scanning solutions can enable some pretty cool products:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7I_q1hCN3c&t=3s

Demand for small and low cost 3D depth sensing solutions is growing rapidly, with the global 3D sensor market estimated to grow to $5.46B in 2022 at a CAGR of 26.5%**. Innovation is always on the horizon and we are excited to see how MEMS and sensors will play a role wowing us.

How Amazon Innovates in ways Google and Apple Can't

Focus on the consumer for successful innovation. (what do they want?)

They want larger screens on their portable devices.

In 2013, we saw PicoP embedded in a Kindle Fire Tablet.... 





Vox.com  -- More at the source.

Google’s approach — solve the hard technical problems first, worry about the business model later — is rooted in the engineering background of Google Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. In contrast, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos spent almost a decade working for several Wall Street firms before starting Amazon — a background that gives him a more pragmatic outlook that’s more focused on developing products customers will actually want to pay for.

Bezos has worked to create a culture at Amazon that’s hospitable to experimentation.

“I know examples where a random Amazon engineer mentions ‘Hey I read about an idea in a blog post, we should do that,’” Eric Ries says. “The next thing he knows, the engineer is being asked to pitch it to the executive committee. Jeff Bezos decides on the spot.”

A key factor in making this work, Ries says, is that experiments start small and grow over time. At a normal company, when the CEO endorses an idea, it becomes a focus for the whole company, which is a recipe for wasting a lot of resources on ideas that don’t pan out. In contrast, Amazon creates a small team to experiment with the idea and find out if it’s viable. Bezos famously instituted the “two-pizza team” rule, which says that teams should be small enough to be fed with two pizzas.