Internet of Things (IoT) : New Business Opportunities & Challenges

IoT has been around for many years now and today it is the much talked topic and buzz word today. IoT just means that the "things" have capability to communicate with each other through wireless network technologies such as Wifi, Blue-tooth, ZigBee, NFC etc to understand each other and communicate over the internet to each other. The 'things' can be any thing from home appliances, tiny wearable computing devices such as watch, glass, shoes to animals!  Yes, you can track and understand your pets through devices tied to your pets.

Internet of things, in-fact its internet of everything is changing the way the internet is being used creating new business opportunities. Some examples of new business opportunities are such as real time monitoring your products, processes which can lead to predictive maintenance and operational efficiency. Your mission critical systems can be more real time and productive. Optimization in your supply chain management by having inventory tracking systems in real time. This improves the visibility of the products and processes and thus winning customer royalty. We can have great energy savings by monitoring the device performance. 

IoT has impacts in all types of businesses. This is simply because, as of today, there are many gaps which can be filled with IoT solutions. Not all the 'things' at homes communicate without human intervention. The human intervention can be completely avoided by delegating certain decision making processes to a connected device. For Example: The water pumping motor can be started automatically based on the communication from water level monitoring device in the water storage tank. A self learning thermostat such as Nest or Lyric turns off the cooling/heating when nobody is there at home.

IoT has numerous business opportunities in healthcare sector. Patients being at their home are still connected to their doctor. The wearables for patients monitor the patient health data and report to the doctor in real time. So doctors can monitor the patients remotely. When it comes to smart cities, the real advantage of IoT can exploited. The smart street lamps for example can be auto turned off when there are no moving objects there by saving electricity and smart speakers in public can make automatic announcements based the unusual people activities in public etc.

The challenges for IoT could be lack of internet connectivity everywhere. Some of the IoT solutions today are not necessarily needed. People can still live without it, however the advantages of IoT based solutions need to be realized by all the stakeholders. Google is already making effort in providing the internet everywhere by having new projects such Google Loon project, Google Internet Drone system etc. The internet usage is not free as of today and hope internet will be made free for all and thus increasing internet users and that's when IoT makes more sense and leads to unlimited business opportunities.

Wearable Technology: The Next Big Thing In Computing?

There seems to be different wave in the market when computing evolved to wearable technology from mobile computing. With Internet Of Things (IoT), the wearables (wearable devices) are gaining more and more popularity.The use cases are unlimited. Take any type of industry, be it consumer electronics, personal health care such as fitness, home automation, building automation, there are applications of wearables. The wearables could be in any form such as Wrist band/watch, glass, jewellery, belts, clothing, footwear, embedded etc. These wearables communicate and control in real time. This is changing the way people are communicating/sharing with one another boosting the personal relationships. This technology is bringing a kind of togetherness among the distant people. The wearable computing is creating new business opportunities with existing products or new products altogether and we can see companies are investing in this type of computing looking at its market trend. 

The reason for this kind of good trend in wearable technology is mainly because of the availability of low cost sensors consuming less power. The wearables themselves may not have all the required intelligence built in them but they do interact with other devices such as mobile, computer system for further data analytic and get appropriate actions back to wearables. The fact that the devices (home appliances, electronic devices, home/building controls, health care systems) can communicate with each over wireless network such as Wifi, Blue-tooth, Blue-tooth low energy (BLE), Near Field Communication(NFC) etc.

No doubt that the wearable technology is going to make human life easier, intuitive, productive and enjoying. Some of the examples include, the wrist wearables from Fitbit, Apple Watch  telling how much calories you've burnt, your heart rate, mobile payment (Good news for people who hate to carry too many cards), Google glass putting the information right at your eye taking voice commands as input. The next version of Google glass will be smart contact lenses that monitor your glucose levels in your tears. The diagnostic wearables measure your, heart rate, ECG,  blood pressure etc. Some wearables take gestures as input for processing. The uses are unlimited and left to your imaginations.

While wearable computing is gaining popularity and having good trends, there are challenges to tackle. The power for all wearables is a major challenge. This can be little relaxed if the wearable works on BLE that may run on a coin cell. Apart from this, there can be solar powered wearables. The next challenge is that are wearables increasing our day to day work such as people need to deal with many gadgets such as computer system, phone, tablet, etc. However looking at the advantages these limitations are not severe.

Android One Powered Affordable phones: What's the big nice about them?

'Android One' is program rolled out first in India by Google. In this program, google made a different version(a kind of stripped down version) of its regular Android operating System to work with low cost hardware. The challenge for Google was that several low end android phones have no way to get the OS updates, and hence they can't enjoy latest android features and apps. Android one has resolved this challenge and that's all about Android One Program. Google has teamed with different vendors (Spice, Micromax, Karbonn as of today) and have launched Android one program in India with price starting above 6K available through on-line retail stores.Google plans to expand Android One outside India as well, this could be through country specific phone vendors.  These devices get OS updates directly from Google whenever available.

The big international smart phone players such as Samsung, HTC, Sony etc,right now use the regular Android OS and put an extra layer of customized UI layer on top of it. These android OS can't directly get the OS updates from Google. The individual vendors need modify their customized android and then give update which takes time. Some vendors will not even promise any system updates once they are sold! And in-fact why vendor customization is what a differentiating factors among android smartphones  and gives competitive advantage. Using Android one vendors can't customize anything but just can make apps and sell the phones. 

Apart from  direct OS updates, low cost, there are other advantages of using Android One phones. People can watch YouTube videos offline. And if you are an Airtel customer, you will get android updates without any data charges(conditions may apply) and free app downloads from Google Play Store till 200 MB per month)

The question is that are international smart phone vendors going to start using Android One? Possibly yes but there is uncertainty about it. I'm guessing the Android version for this segment is called Android Silver, however as such there are no much details about it.

iPhone 6, Apple Watch: No Surprises Yet Gadgets Entering The Crowded Market

Apple Inc., announced two new phones iphone6, iPhone 6 plus & Apple Watch on 9th September. These new models just have bigger screens with edges curved than iPhone 4, iPhone5S with little thinner in size and nothing else. Apple had never liked the big screen phones, then probably they have managed to make big screen phones, this is  probably because market is crowded with big screen android phones and Apple never had big screens so far. The only new stuff with newly announced gadgets is 'Apple Pay' which is wireless mobile payment method. Apple claims that it has partnered with major credit card companies and  has  predicted that 83% of US transactions will happen by Apple Pay. Apple pay is the feature  for  which Apple mainly added NFC (Near Field Communication) to their phones.

These gadgets are entering the crowded market as apple has done nothing different than what rest of the companies are already doing. There are no surprises, excitements as such in these gadgets. The concept of smart watch is present from the year 1982. But yet Apple has made an attempt to better understand their customer needs. The differentiating factor may be the gadgets' design itself. These gadgets are really nicely made. The Apple Watches are just awesome. The apple watch has integrated with health kit. It measures your heart beat, how much you've walked, etc using 3 integrated sensors & using GPS. The Apple Pay may take the market share. The company plans to monetize Apple Pay transactions in the future generating the new stream of revenue.

Having talked about these wonderful smart gadgets, don't you think we've more work to do? Didn't get it? Now you'll have handle more gadgets. For example, you need to charge your Laptop, phone, watch and any other gadgets that you may have. I was just expecting that Apple will get away with too many gadgets that people need to deal with and just come up with a wearable technology and device that suffices all the smart phone work. This could have been really a surprise.