Blog articles from 01/2017

We recently released a  complimentary whitepaper  examining the top trends in the connected home, health, and mobile industries.  Top 10 Consumer IoT Trends in 2017 , which features insight from Parks Associates’ analyst team, examines key topics driving growth and monetization of the IoT. To cross the chasm, the smart home industry will continue to develop new use cases for security, peace of mind, and energy management. Despite years of collective...

The personal assistant device market took off in 2016. Google Home joined Amazon Echo in time for the holiday sales season, and Amazon sold out of its Echo and Tap models in the run-up to Christmas. We expect this market to grow substantially in 2017, with increasing consumer adoption rates and new market entrants. With its announcement at CES  of Hub, a smart robotic personal assistant speaker, LG is the next to enter this space.   To compete with Amazon Echo and...

We recently released a  complimentary whitepaper  examining the top trends in the connected home, health, and mobile industries.  Top 10 Consumer IoT Trends in 2017 , which features insight from Parks Associates’ analyst team, examines key topics driving growth and monetization of the IoT. Wearables and smart watches are expanding as healthcare tools and will be integrated with other IoT applications. The market for smart watches, and for wearables...

Fitbit’s stock had a terrible year in 2016 even though the company posted double-digit growth in both revenues and device sales. That is how tough to be in hardware business these days. Fitbit has never hid its ambition for pursuing growth opportunities via the corporate wellness and health insurance channels, but that growth has yet to be validated through financial metrics. The upcoming fourth-quarter financials and its 10-K report later this year would clear a lot of...

We recently released a complimentary whitepaper examining the top trends in the connected home, health, and mobile industries. Top 10 Consumer IoT Trends in 2017 , which features insight from Parks Associates’ analyst team, examines key topics driving growth and monetization of the IoT. Consumerization of healthcare services and devices drives integration with smart home ecosystems and new business models. Connected healthcare is taking a more prominent role in the...

Nissan recently tweeted that its upcoming CES announcement will involve Cortana, Microsoft's personal assistant. Below I offer some background about Nissan's partnership with Microsoft and its possible implications for the future of Nissan cars to provide a context for the upcoming announcement.  At CES 2016, Nissan announced a partnership with Microsoft to use Microsoft Azure, the collective name for Microsoft’s cloud services. Through the partnership, Microsoft Azure...