Blog articles from 01/2020

Smart bathroom products are emerging New product demonstrations at CES 2020 along with brand announcements throughout this quarter reveal that bathroom products are among the next wave of products in the home to become smart. Several companies including Kohler, Electric Mirror, and TOTO, provided displays for products such as smart shower heads, baths, mirrors, and toilets. Along with the smartening up of bathroom fixtures, Shine has developed a bathroom assistant robot that...

Allison Neves , President of A7 Advisors , shared some insights with us as a sneak peek for her presentation at the upcoming Smart Energy Summit in Austin this month. Allison will participate on the expert panel Lessons Learned: Partnerships and Adoption of Smart Energy Solutions on Wednesday, February 19, 2020 at 1:15 pm. Her panel will discuss how new business models and technologies provide opportunities to change the customer relationship and drive engagement and...

Tech giants were in full display at CES with expanding ecosystems, new products, and standards initiates to help push the smart home forward. These companies, due to their visibility and brand recognition, are enabling new waves in the smart home market. The following tech giants showcased the following capabilities and announcements at CES: Amazon:  The “Works with Ring” program and Amazon Alexa ecosystems are to integrate as well as the Key by Amazon program. This...

At CES 2020, many robot announcements were made with a focus around education, service, and emotional care or support. Last week, Samsung introduced two separate robot form factors: A tennis ball sized robot called Ballie. Ballie has a camera and is designed to patrol the home. It can serve as a fitness assistant, prompting consumers to get active, it can also interact with other devices in the home. For example, Ballie can instruct a smart vacuum cleaner to clean up messes throughout the...

Affordability is now the key to the smart home. New Parks Associates research shows that affordability has become the leading purchase consideration for smart home device purchase intenders. More than half (51%) of purchase intenders rank affordability as a top 3 purchase consideration, beating product reviews (31%) and data privacy/security efforts (29%). Affordability concerns have also become the leading purchase inhibitor among non-owners and non-intenders. Nearly half (44%) of...

CES is always an interesting time. Companies show off their latest and - hopefully - greatest, and we get to guess which of these things will actually still exist in a couple of months. This year, due to throwing out my back the prior Friday during the extremely daring and strenuous task of getting out of a chair, I missed attending in person. Instead I scoured the headlines for articles of interest. And, lo, I found something interesting. No, it wasn't cute robots. Or fake pork. Or...

Contributing Author: Steve Nason The big question ahead of Netflix’s upcoming earnings call on January 21 centers on the impact that Disney+ has had on Netflix’s domestic subscriber count and growth in subscriptions. There is significant concern in the industry that Disney’s service will prompt some of Netflix’s subscribers to drop the service. There are likely a small number of Netflix subscribers who subscribed solely for the Disney content and will now cancel in...

The connected health industry has been experiencing a shift the past five years to a more consumer-centric model. This year at CES 2020, exhibitors demonstrated a clear move toward marketing their solutions as beneficial to the consumer’s overall health and wellbeing rather than focusing on a specific aspect of the consumer’s life. This is especially true of solutions marketed toward older consumers and people caring for their loved ones. The shift toward sensor-based technology...