Blog articles from 01/2018

The evolution of the connected home continues to create opportunities for communication service providers. Parks Associates research shows that 117 million households in North America have broadband, an 87% market penetration. 76% of broadband households use Wi-Fi as their primary connection technology. Operators are competing with a growing array of products that are staking a claim in the home with offers of an improved Wi-Fi experience, smart home controls, voice interfaces, and...

The smart home is a comprised of a collection of products and services that serve the needs of consumers using either a centralized or a distributed control architecture. In a distributed control architecture individual products perform specific jobs for consumers, but those products also benefit from collaboration with other products. A loose collaboration between autonomous products is sufficient for many jobs; however, some tasks may be better served by if they were coordinated as a...

  One of the most exciting topics at this year's Consumer Electronics Show was voice assistants. Amazon and Google are competing head-to-head in this space, with Samsung beginning to roll out Bixby to more devices. Amazon is well in the lead with well over 40M Echo sales to date according to Parks Associates' estimates, but Google's efforts in conversational AI and deep integration with search is helping to make Google Home a compelling value...

If you spent any time in the Sands Convention Center—part of CES 2018’s Tech West exhibition—you couldn’t miss the explosion of companies offering sleep solutions this year. From startups to established companies like Philips and Nokia, everyone wants to capture a piece of this market. Form factors on display include smart mattresses, sensor strips that slip underneath sheets, smart pillows, smart sensors that clip on pillows, smart sensors that clip on clothes, bed-side...

Having seen a fair few products and services at CES 2018, one technology stood out to me as being particularly interesting from a consumer standpoint: cloud computing services for the consumer. Two companies in particular were showing off this technology on the show floor, NVIDIA and a smaller company called Shadow. These companies charge consumers a monthly fee to stream the processing power of a high-end PC to any broadband-connected computer, the selling point being that once you...

Another day of meetings and discovery at CES 2018. Here are a few additional thoughts on what I have seen at the show on day two. 8K is moving closer to reality. Yes. I understand. 4K is just gaining a foothold in the market, and HDR provides a visual pop at retail that may be more compelling than 4K alone. Yet, new 8K-based products are in evidence, with several slated for public release later this year. Samsung’s massive 146-inch “The Wall” TV (which is actually modular...

The Consumer Electronics Show has become such a staple in the life of analysts and the consumer technology industry, I actually now find myself surprised that the dates for CES are not pre-printed on calendars, much like Presidents Day or Groundhog Day. CES veterans often the same dueling anticipations - new discoveries vs. travel hassles and big crowds. Ultimately, the hope of the former overshadows the dread of the latter, and we visit the booths, presentations, press events, and...

Speaking from an entertainment focus at CES, nearly everyone I met with talked about being able to provide a single, unified interface for all the video products and services that consumers are using. And when you think about it, it makes complete sense why that is such a big deal. We have reached the point where using two or more video services is becoming the norm rather than the exception to a rule, and because users have to sort through the several different services they use to...