Blog articles from 03/2017

Samsung’s new Gear VR headset and motion controller that it announced at Samsung’s Unpacked event are exactly what Samsung needs to remain at the top of the mobile VR space. Samsung already boasts a majority of advantages when Gear VR is compared to competitors such as Google Daydream and other mobile VR viewers. Gear VR was the first major VR headset available on the market, and it also benefitted from Samsung’s marketing, demos, and promotion throughout its lifecycle, which...

The Samsung Galaxy S8 event was yesterday, and, like many an analyst covering the mobile space, I watched it. Here are some of my key takeaways for the event: The Samsung Galaxy S8 may finally be the phone that replaces your PC. The S8's DeX desktop-like experience offers consumers the ability to connect to a monitor and use apps in a desktop-like mode, viewing apps side-by-side and enabling keyboard and mouse control. Apple has no feature comparable...

Blog post submitted by AUVSI Consumers love drones. They were a hot holiday gift item in 2016, and interest continues to grow. In fact, Goldman Sachs estimates the consumer market for drones will generate $17 billion between 2016 and 2020. Driving much of this growth is consumer interest in drones and their social, leisure, and security applications. Social media feeds are starting to feature “dronies” – selfies taken with a drone. A host of new, smaller drones...

CSS Corp recently hosted an influencer day in Dallas, where it showcased its business focus. CSS Corp, like many other support companies, is rethinking its business strategy in the wake of the IoT. A central aspect of the company’s focus is not trying to be everything to everyone. Instead, the company’s business strategy is centered on customer experience, revenue creation, specialization, and operational efficiency for its customers. Today, when brands talk about navigating...

Last Thursday, Google provided an unsolicited ad to Google Home users, testing, for the first time, its ability to run ads on its smart speaker. Google Home users reported asking their device about their schedule and along with the weather, news updates, and traffic, the speaker played a 17-second promotion of the new movie Beauty and the Beast. Users immediately took notice of the sly ad insertion taking to social media to relay their frustrations,...

Voice-enabled technologies have experienced massive growth in the consumer market since the introduction of Siri in 2011. The momentum in voice technologies is similar to the Internet boom in the 1990s. Companies who did not get on board and create a web presence, especially in commerce, fell behind to their competitors. The voice-first movement may elicit the same effect. For companies to capitalize on the current market opportunity, they must consider enabling a voice experience with...

The traditional watch market faces two forms of competition from the CE space. First, the ubiquity of smartphones decreases the need for a separate timepiece. Second, the smart watch category challenges the traditional watch segment directly. Shipments of Swiss-made watches fell by over 14% from July 2015 to July 2016, and traditional watch sales declined across all price categories. Recent Parks Associates research assessed the impact of smart watches on the traditional watch...

Smart kitchens represent the next wave of the smart home evolution. For the past two years, large appliance manufacturers, including GE Appliances, Samsung, LG, and Whirlpool have used the consumer electronics show to showcase elaborate plans for residential kitchens. If these innovations live up to the hype, our future kitchens will study our patterns of behavior as well as our preferences and perform many kitchen-based activities on our behalf. Rollout of first-generation smart...