Upgrade Cycle at hand

I've been watching for a couple of days the rather rare event of Apple products being discounted. They do this when an upgrade cycle is at hand. Interesting, and something to watch, but that's about all.

For all of these companies to be offering discounts simultaneously -- that's even more interesting.

It's possible that they all over-produced these devices and they need to reduce inventory, or that they're trying to increase adoption. But the market for these devices isn't shrinking, it's growing rapidly.

But it looks to me like there's a new feature coming, and they're making room.

When I've talked to the people at Amazon stores, and other places that sell them, the common response is that almost always the second speaker someone buys is a speaker with a screen.


Digital Trends

Choosing what smart home products are right for you is really about choosing the right voice assistant. With Amazon Echo, Google Home, and Apple HomePod all using separate assistants, it can be difficult to decide which one is right for you. On the one hand, Amazon Alexa offers a huge range of integration. There are tons of smart plugs, smart bulbs, TVs, cars, and microwaves that work with Alexa — making it the most widely integrated of the three. On the other hand, though Google Assistant is still a bit behind, a lot of people prefer interactions with this A.I. over Alexa.

Whether you’re in the market for an Echo or a Google Home smart speaker, the price is likely going to end up playing a big role in your purchasing decision. Amazon and Walmart are both offering generous discounts on smart home bundles, speakers, and displays right now. With discounts up to $65, now is a great time to add a little extra smart to your home.

Microvision Interactive Smart Speaker Demo

I'm thinking we'll hear more in October.

I recognize that speaker's voice....

And.... don't forget... at the distributor.... WPG Holdings


Microvision

Today’s global smart speaker market is rapidly expanding, up 187% year over year in Q2 20182. Many companies are seeking ways to differentiate their offerings to gain market share and increase monetization of their platforms since most users use only a few simple skills that are not tied to monetization.

Some companies are starting to add physical screens to their smart speakers to increase the consumer use of the VDA. These displays make it easier for the users to interact with VDAs, especially when there are multiple choices or lists. However, the industrial design and form factor suffer as these devices start to look and act just like large tablets. In many cases, the addition of a physical screen is not an option due to space, size and cost limitations.

MicroVision’s advanced interactive display technology can produce a large, on-demand, cost-effective interactive display without growing the form factor of a typical smart speaker. Very importantly, MicroVision’s technology provides the user with a natural way to interact with the VDA and is designed to increase the monetization opportunities for platform providers. The video below highlights an example use-case with a touch interface enabled by MicroVision’s Prototype Interactive Display Engine.

Amazon Bezos' Letter

And we know they're going to be WAY more useful with BIG & interactive screens.

They are inviting anyone to create devices with "Alexa" inside. (I had a very nice chat at CES with an Amazon representative who is part of that program.)

Things are going to get interesting.

Full Letter Text


CNBC

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has released his latest annual shareholder letter.

In the letter, Bezos stressed the importance of having high standards in running a business. By setting high standards, companies are able to live up to "ever-rising customer expectations," he said.

"How do you stay ahead of ever-rising customer expectations? There's no single way to do it – it's a combination of many things. But high standards (widely deployed and at all levels of detail) are certainly a big part of it," Bezos wrote in the letter.

Bezos also disclosed for the first time that Prime now exceeds 100 million members worldwide. In 2017 alone, Amazon added more Prime members than any prior year, and shipped over five billion items through the paid membership service worldwide, he said.

Amazon also sold the most number of devices last year, with customers buying "tens of millions" of Echo devices, Bezos wrote in the letter.

With regards to Whole Foods, Bezos said the "technical work" is currently under way to bring Prime member benefits to the grocery chain.

Alexa – Customer embrace of Alexa continues, with Alexa-enabled devices among the best-selling items across all of Amazon. We’re seeing extremely strong adoption by other companies and developers that want to create their own experiences with Alexa. There are now more than 30,000 skills for Alexa from outside developers, and customers can control more than 4,000 smart home devices from 1,200 unique brands with Alexa. The foundations of Alexa continue to get smarter every day too. We’ve developed and implemented an on-device fingerprinting technique, which keeps your device from waking up when it hears an Alexa commercial on TV. (This technology ensured that our Alexa Super Bowl commercial didn’t wake up millions of devices.) Far-field speech recognition (already very good) has improved by 15% over the last year; and in the U.S., U.K., and Germany, we’ve improved Alexa’s spoken language understanding by more than 25% over the last 12 months through enhancements in Alexa’s machine learning components and the use of semi-supervised learning techniques. (These semi-supervised learning techniques reduced the amount of labeled data needed to achieve the same accuracy improvement by 40 times!) Finally, we’ve dramatically reduced the amount of time required to teach Alexa new languages by using machine translation and transfer learning techniques, which allows us to serve customers in more countries (like India and Japan).

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Amazon devices – 2017 was our best year yet for hardware sales. Customers bought tens of millions of Echo devices, and Echo Dot and Fire TV Stick with Alexa were the best-selling products across all of Amazon – across all categories and all manufacturers. Customers bought twice as many Fire TV Sticks and Kids Edition Fire Tablets this holiday season versus last year. 2017 marked the release of our all-new Echo with an improved design, better sound, and a lower price; Echo Plus with a built-in smart home hub; and Echo Spot, which is compact and beautiful with a circular screen. We released our next generation Fire TV, featuring 4K Ultra HD and HDR; and the Fire HD 10 Tablet, with 1080p Full HD display. And we celebrated the 10th anniversary of Kindle by releasing the all-new Kindle Oasis, our most advanced reader ever. It’s waterproof – take it in the bathtub – with a bigger 7” high-resolution 300 ppi display and has built-in audio so you can also listen to your books with Audible.

Early Stage Viral....

More and more talk about it will do us well.

KEY components in emerging tech arenas. 



Amazon Echo Spot

Patently Apple

System #10 may include input-output circuitry such as touch sensors, buttons, microphones to gather voice input and other input, sensors, and other devices that gather input (e.g., user input from viewer 16) and may include light-emitting diodes, one or more displays, speakers, and other devices for providing output (e.g., output for viewer 16).

System #10 may, if desired, include wireless circuitry and/or other circuitry to support communications with a computer or other external equipment.

In addition, system #10 may include sensors such as an accelerometer, compass, an ambient light sensor or other light detector, a proximity sensor, a scanning laser system, an images sensor, and/or other sensors may be used in gathering input during operation of the display.

During operation, the control circuitry may supply image content to the display. The content may be remotely received from a computer or other content source coupled to system #10 (like Apple TV or an iDevice).

Apple's patent FIG. 2A noted below is a top view of an illustrative near-eye display system having an optical system including an input coupler and an output coupler at least partially embedded in a waveguide substrate.


EETimes

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.

The Device-free future

SitePoint

For a few years we’ve asked ourselves this question: now that computers, mobiles and other computerized screens have overcome just about all of the limitations that previously frustrated us, what’s next? As Vauhini Vara writes in the New Yorker, we’re looking at the start of a post-device future. Computer technology is powerful and flexible enough that we can start to expand it beyond the basic screen-and-input paradigm, integrating it seamlessly into our environment.

New Yorker

“Looking to the future, the next big step will be for the very concept of the ‘device’ to fade away.” His point was that, because computing technology is becoming smaller and more powerful, computers can be built in all kinds of forms. Building devices is no longer hard. The difficult part—and the part that will distinguish products from one another—is the experience that computers facilitate.

It might seem odd, then, that on Wednesday, Pichai got onstage to hype a new device. Google Home, which the company unveiled at its annual conference for developers, is a “voice-activated home product,” in Google’s parlance, which means you can command it to do things and it will respond. It’s a cute little thing—if Wall-E had an affair with a salt shaker, their love child might look a bit like this—but it appears to have some pretty powerful capabilities: music, making dinner reservations, texting friends, and more.

Google's Answer to Amazon Echo

From CNBC

Google’s answer to Amazon's Echo is code-named ‘Chirp’ and is landing soon

A product team at Google is working on a hardware device that would integrate Google's search and voice assistant technology, akin to theAmazon Echo, Recode has learned.

Google's device will resemble its OnHub wireless router, according to several sources. We don't know if it has a name yet, but internally the project goes by "Chirp."

Sources said the device is unlikely to launch next week at Google's I/O developer conference, but plans are for it to land at some point this year.

We should, however, get a peek at it and its potential next week — voice search and intelligent personal assistance will occupy center stage at the company's splash show, along with virtual reality.