Author: Bob O'Donnell

While no one would argue the Internet’s incredibly positive impact on so many aspects of our lives, it is interesting to see that long-held assumptions about it don’t always ring true.

Take, for instance, the common notion that the web is the ideal distribution platform for all kinds of goods and services, particularly digital media. There’s an entire segment of the world’s economy, in fact, which is arguably based on that hypothesis.

But several decades into the internet revolution, there seem to be several glaring cases where web-centric businesses based on these assumptions aren’t really living up to their potential—at all.

One of the most obvious examples is music. For so many reasons and in so many ways, the distribution of music digitally via the web seems like a match made in heaven. Music plays an important role in most people’s lives—an extremely important role for some consumers—so there’s strong built-in demand, and the small size of digitized music files makes them seemingly easy to transfer via the enormous range of routes over which we now have access to the internet.

And yet, here we are in 2016 with more news about the struggles of online music businesses than success stories to share. Market leaders Spotify and Pandora continue to lose money, as do players such as SoundCloud, and smaller services like Rdio and now MixRadio close on a frequent basis. Even the very biggest names in tech—including Apple and Google—have struggled to find a lasting, profitable business model for their large investments in digital music.

For a long time, of course, Apple had great success with iTunes. So much so, in fact, that they changed the nature of the music business. Unfortunately, that success also brought with it an entirely new, and more dour perspective from the traditional music owners—large music labels—that’s making new business ventures in music significantly more challenging.

Equally important, tastes in digital music consumption evolved from buying and downloading songs to streaming them. Consumers have become captivated by the option of getting access to an enormous range of musical choices, particularly in conjunction with the unique music discovery and social sharing capabilities that these services offer.

But streaming services don’t seem to be the ultimate solution either. Most are ad-based and struggle with converting free customers to paid ones. In addition, there’s growing resentment in the music industry about the royalty payments made to musicians from these services. In fact, at this week’s Grammy awards, there was an impassioned plea from the music industry about the inequity of receiving tiny fraction-of-a-cent payouts for streaming music.[pullquote]While people acknowledge that there’s value in content, paying for that content alone doesn’t seem to be a viable way of doing business long-term. .[/pullquote]

The problem is, despite these concerns about payouts to the music industry, online music companies still have to invest significant money in order to get access to new music. Perhaps to no one’s surprise, the real issue seems to be in how that money is being distributed.

The other challenge is one that seems to be similar to many other web-based media properties. While people acknowledge that there’s value in content, paying for that content alone doesn’t seem to be a viable way of doing business long-term. In the case of music sites, because they can’t seem to make money selling the music itself, they’re hoping to do so selling tickets to concerts, as well as artist’s t-shirts and other promotional items. It’s not likely to lead to gangbuster profits, but this more indirect model may at least lead to businesses that can survive.

Longer term, however, there’s going to have to be some serious soul-searching and re-examination of long-held assumptions about internet business models, because they’re clearly not all spun from the gold of which many believe the web is made.

One of the greatest yet most easily overlooked benefits of modern technology and modern science is the ability it gives us to both literally and metaphorically “see” things that were not visible or understood before. Unfortunately, when it comes to smart homes, home networks, and data connectivity in general, we’re still essentially blind to what’s actually going on.

Sure, with a bit of effort, you can find out how much of your monthly data plan you’ve used in a given month, but figuring out what kind of data packets are traversing your home network and where they’re coming from? Fuhgetaboudit.

Truth be told, our collective naiveté on the subject was acceptable in simpler, digitally safer times. After all, network packet analysis hasn’t likely been very high on most consumers’ to-do lists and thankfully, there wasn’t that much to worry about.

Now, however, things are different — much different.

The horror stories about the kinds of gaping security holes that many IoT and smart home products are opening people up to are just getting started. Unfortunately, they’re bound to get worse before they get better—and that may be a while. I understand the righteous indignation generated by government-driven surveillance programs, but why isn’t there even greater outrage at efforts being made to parlay our devices into digital zombies hell bent on taking down web sites through DDOS (distributed denial of service) attacks, or tapping into home security cameras to watch sleeping babies?

Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking may be concerned about the future of autonomous robots and their impact on humanity, but I’d really like to know what kind of potentially nefarious data from places unknown is zipping around my home network as I write.

I have to admit I find it particularly ironic that many of the strongest proponents of smart home products focus on the security benefits that connected video cameras and other related devices offer. In fact, nearly 75% of smart home products sold are related to security according to market research firm NPD, but they’re 100% focused on physical security.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Physical security is incredibly important, but it’s high time to start placing serious (and perhaps equal) emphasis on digital and cyber security. Wouldn’t you want to be notified if you started receiving or spitting out a flood of unrequested traffic from or to another country on your home network in the same way that you receive a notification if your connected video camera sees your dog moving? Even better, wouldn’t you want tools that can start automatically blocking that traffic for you and notify you they’re doing so?[pullquote]Physical security is incredibly important, but it’s high time to start placing serious (and perhaps equal) emphasis on digital and cyber security.”[/pullquote]

Even beyond obvious examples like that, why can’t I get more insight into what’s actually going on inside my network—where data is coming from and going, to which device, etc? While we’re at it, how is it that, in 2016, I still can’t tell (without a lot of effort) exactly which outlet and which device(s) in my home are the ones sapping up the most “vampire” power?

Part of the challenge, of course, is figuring out how to deliver this kind of information in a way normal human beings can understand. Making sense of network traffic isn’t something people want to have to think about but we can no longer afford to ignore it. Clever software designers and smart engineers should be able to tackle this challenge and create a way to make the invisible realities of our increasingly digital world more tangible, relatable, intelligible, and concrete.

I see this as one of several current challenges. Apply analytics to our personal big data—the data, environment, and events that happen all around us. From health care to finance to transportation to communications, there’s a staggering amount of opportunities to try and organize and make sense of this contextual information in a way that’s actually meaningful to our lives.

The first step along this path, arguably, should be in the home, our place of safety and refuge. But, while the concept of a connected home may be interesting, until it can keep the occupants safe from both physical and cyber threats, I don’t see how we can justify calling it smart.

Okay, I’ll admit it. It’s not exactly the sexiest topic in the world.

But, when it comes to the practical, day-to-day existence with all of our modern devices, connectivity is an important story. When you survey the landscape of connectivity topics, it’s hard to ignore the impact various types of USB have had. Sure, the multiple new wireless standards tend to get a lot more attention. However, for most people, wired connections between devices are still an extremely common means of making things work and no wired connection is more ubiquitous than USB. (Except for power, but we’ll get to that in a second.)

The latest iteration of the USB connector is called Type-C, and while it was officially introduced in 2014, it’s really just starting to appear on the devices we can buy and use. Apple’s 2015 MacBook was among the first to support the new connector but it’s now showing up on all kinds of Windows PCs, smartphones, monitors, docking stations, storage peripherals and more. Like Apple’s Lightning connector, the USB Type-C connector is reversible, meaning you can plug it in in any orientation and it will work (and won’t get jammed in the wrong way).

USB Type-C is also associated with, though officially different from, USB version 3.1, which is currently the highest speed iteration of the standard. It supports transfer rates of 10 Gb/sec, a nearly 1,000x improvement over the 1996-era USB 1.0 spec, which topped out at 12 Mb/sec.

Equally important, USB Type-C supports several alternate modes, most notably the ability to carry up to 100W of power over the line, as well as the ability to drive up to two 4K displays at a 60Hz refresh rate. Best of all, it can do this simultaneously with data transfer, allowing a single connector to theoretically deliver power, data and video over a single line. Truly, this should be the one cable to rule them all.

As we all know, however, there’s often a big difference between theory and practice. The crux of the problem is that not all USB Type-C connectors support all of these different capabilities and, with one important exception, it’s almost impossible for an average person to figure out what a given USB Type-C equipped device supports without doing a good deal of research.

The key exception is for Thunderbolt 3.0, a technology originally developed by Intel. It’s a different interface standard than USB 3.1, but uses the same USB Type-C connectors. Thunderbolt 3.0 connectors (which, by the way, are different than previous versions of Thunderbolt—versions 1 and 2 used the same connectors as the mini-DisplayPort video standard) are marked by a lightning bolt next to the connector, making them easy for almost anyone to identify. To be clear however, they aren’t the same as the somewhat similarly shaped Lightning connectors used by Apple (which, ironically, don’t have a lightning bolt next to them). Confused? You’re not alone.

Arguably, Thunderbolt 3.0 is essentially a superset of USB 3.1, as it can carry full USB 3.1 signals at 10 Gb/sec, as well as PCIe 3.0, HDMI 2.0 or DisplayPort 1.2 video signals, 100W of power, and Thunderbolt data connections at up to 40 Gb/sec, all over a single USB Type-C connection. The only downside to Thunderbolt 3 is that it requires a dedicated Thunderbolt controller chip in any device that supports it, which adds cost. Also, full-bandwidth Thunderbolt 3 cables can be expensive, because they require active electronics inside them.

Standard USB Type-C, on the other hand, can be implemented by device makers a bit less expensively and full bandwidth cables, while also active, tend to be cheaper than Thunderbolt versions. However, along with this cost decrease comes the opportunity for confusion. Just because a device has USB Type-C connectors does not mean it supports power or any other alternate mode, such as support for video standards DisplayPort or MHL (used on some smartphones to drive larger displays). In fact, technically, it’s even possible to have USB Type-C ports that don’t support USB 3.1, although in reality, that’s highly unlikely to ever occur.

The real problem is there are no simple means of demarcation or labelling for different varieties of USB Type-C. One of the goals of the standard was to produce a much smaller connector that would fit on smaller devices—leaving little room for any type of icon.[pullquote]The real problem is there are no simple means of demarcation or labelling for different varieties of USB Type-C.”[/pullquote]

The other issue is, with the launch of USB Type-C, we’re seeing one of the first iterations of what I would call “virtualization” of the port. Until recently, each port had its own connector and carried its own type of signal. USB carried data to peripherals, Ethernet handled networking, video connectors such as HDMI and DisplayPort carried video, etc. Now the rise of multipurpose ports such as USB Type-C have broken that 1:1 correlation between ports and functions. While this consolidation is clearly an important technical step forward, it also points out the opportunity for confusion if user education and basic labelling techniques are overlooked.

On the bright side, this “virtualization” of ports will lead to a wide variety of the most useful docking stations and port replicators we’ve ever seen, particularly for notebook PCs, tablets, and even smartphones. You’ll be able to plug one cable into your device and get access to every single port you can imagine, as well as providing power back to the device. We’ll also start to see new types of peripherals, such as single cable monitors act as hubs to other devices, receiving power and video from the host device, while also enabling the connection of speakers, USB storage, and even a second daisy-chained monitor.

Eventually, most of these connections will likely become wireless but, given the need for power and the expected challenges around delivering wireless power to many devices, it’s clear variations on USB Type-C, particularly Thunderbolt 3.0 and later iterations, will be around for some time to come.

The proliferation of USB Type-C clearly marks the dawn of a great new era of connectivity for our devices, but it may require a bit of homework on your part to fully enjoy it.

I’m not sure how else to describe it.

Imagine a device that features several computer subsystems, at least one of which offers supercomputer-level performance, the highest end GPUs, multiple large size, high-resolution displays, surround sound-enabled high resolution audio, integrated 4G connectivity, multiple function-specific controllers, voice and touch-based modes of input, a dedicated connectivity bus for internal communications between subsystems, millimeter-level location and mapping accuracy, multiple high-resolution camera inputs, and a high-level operating system that can even virtualize guest OS’s.

Even better, imagine this computing capability—which is well beyond anything an individual can purchase or use today—is essentially “subsidized” into the price of the device.

Sound good?

Well, that’s essentially what the cars of the near future (not quite present) will be. The ultimate personal computing device, wrapped into the sexy, sleek package of an automobile.

Walking around the CES show in Las Vegas last week and meeting with car makers and component suppliers, one couldn’t help but get the sense that, yes, the future of computing is mobile, but this is mobility on a whole other scale.[pullquote]With automotive computing, this is mobility on a whole other scale.”[/pullquote]

Throw in the growth of parking sensors, traffic monitors, and other metropolitan-focused IoT infrastructure elements, and you can imagine cars as the “client” in the network of a smart city. That’s network and cloud-based computing at a whole other level as well.

As a long-time observer of computer-based devices, from PCs to smartphones to wearables and more, it’s fascinating to see how much and how quickly the latest core component technologies from these devices are making their way into automobiles.

Of course, as a long-time tech industry observer, I have also found it interesting to think of the strange bedfellows new car technologies could create. Ford’s new Sync3 platform, for example, is based on a high-level OS made by Blackberry-owned QNX, but offers the ability to essentially “virtualize” the projected automobile platforms of both Apple (CarPlay) and Google (Android Auto). The QNX host OS remains the primary platform but this architecture lets car buyers choose to use either (or neither) of the two mobile platforms within the context of the overall Ford branded in-car experience. Smart.

What’s also interesting to observe is how compelling a use case cars represent for computing power. At nVidia’s CES press conference for example, the company introduced their Drive PX2 platform, a next generation Tegra-powered supercomputer on a board, which is specifically focused on autonomous driving and ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems). The company went into great detail to illustrate just how complex the process of integrating all the various camera, lidar, and sensor inputs an autonomous car would need and provided the best justification I’ve seen as to why companies are working on delivering that much computing capability for personal computing devices. Of course, it also confirmed my suspicions that truly autonomous cars are still a long way off. In the near term however, the ability to leverage that kind of power for ADAS applications means it has relevance for today’s auto designers.

The show also allowed mobile powerhouse Qualcomm to unveil its first major in-car infotainment design via a new deal with Audi. It’s interesting to note that, in a number of designs, the infotainment system is separate from the ADAS and/or autonomous driving features, with a fully secured gateway fixed in between them. Yet another example of how traditional computer technologies are being integrated into today’s cars. Of course, from a computer perspective, this separation also means there are multiple subsystems running inside the automobile, further highlighting how much technology some of these cars will soon have.

Part of the reason for all of this technology inclusion stems from a point I made at the beginning. With price points measured in the tens of thousands, it’s a lot easier to integrate a wider variety of more expensive components into car prices than to create a standalone computing device with the same capabilities. Nevertheless, it’s becoming clear that, if you want to get access to the most powerful personal computing device possible, it may be the one with wheels.

This problem isn’t a new one for technology products, but it is for smartphones.

After a long, powerful run, the smartphone market is starting to peak. In the US, the market is likely to be flat or even modestly down either this year or next. In the fast-growing China market, they’ve already experienced year-over-year smartphone shipment declines in the first quarter of this year. On a worldwide basis, growth is still expected to occur in 2016 but forecasts have now been reduced to single digit levels.

Many of the recent news stories on the topic point to market saturation, particularly in regions like the US, Western Europe, and China, where smartphones have become ubiquitous. But the problem is actually much deeper—people are starting to hold onto their phones longer, extending the lifetimes of the devices.

In a recent survey of over 3,000 consumers across five countries (US, UK, Germany, Brazil and China) conducted by TECHnalysis Research, consumers said they expected to replace their smartphones every 1.8 years. On the surface, that seems fine and is probably in line with what people have done in the past. In response to the same question about notebook PCs, people said they expected to replace those devices every 2.5 years.

In reality, however, notebook PC replacements occur closer to 5 years. In other words, people clearly aren’t good at estimating how long they plan to keep a device. To be fair, I don’t think smartphone replacement times will be double the 1.8-year lifecycle they responded with, but I am certain they will be longer. That is the crux of the challenge for the smartphone market.

As we saw first with PCs and then with tablets, once a market reaches the saturation point, future growth becomes nearly completely dependent on refresh rates and lifecycle—how quickly (or not) you choose to upgrade what you have.

[pullquote]As we saw first with PCs and then with tablets, once a market reaches the saturation point, future growth becomes nearly completely dependent on refresh rates and lifecycle.”[/pullquote]

In the case of smartphones, there are a number of key developments triggering these longer lifetimes. Here in the US, the gradual disappearance of subsidies from the carriers has been a big factor but, in many other parts of the world, there have never been subsidies and people have always had to pay full price for their smartphones. In those markets, and now in the US as well, the bigger issue has been a slowing down of major innovation as smartphones have matured and reached a level of quality and capability that satisfies most people’s needs.

To be clear, I’m not saying there isn’t any innovation going on in smartphones—there clearly is—but once people get a 5” or larger HD display, a good quality camera, lots of storage, speedy network connections, and access to millions of applications and services, most people think their phone is “good enough.” Larger displays in particular have been a key factor in reaching this point and Apple, though they were late to the party, clearly benefited handsomely once they entered the larger phone market with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.

Moving forward, it’s going to be much harder to provide the kind of clearly better innovations that are going to make people feel the need to upgrade. In fact, that’s part of the reason I believe carriers, as well as companies like Apple, are creating and strongly pushing programs that enable you to upgrade on a regular basis. Many of these companies are concerned you won’t otherwise upgrade frequently (or at least at a rate they would prefer). Interestingly, early reports on these upgrade programs suggest a reasonable number of people are signing up for them but crucially, not many people have actually turned in their existing phones for new ones. Apparently, many people see these programs almost as a type of insurance they can use if or when they choose to.

The problem isn’t just hardware, either. As people start to do more and more with their smartphones, the amount of information on those devices is increasingly tremendous. That, in turn, makes the actual upgrade process from your existing phone to a new one much more complicated than it used to be. Instead of just having to transfer over your names and numbers, you now have photos, music, videos, applications, settings, and much more.

Even if you use a number of cloud-based applications, you still have to deal with logging back into all of them, often with passwords you’ve long since forgotten. Toss in the fact you’ll likely be moving to a new version of an operating system that may or may not “like” the versions of the applications you use and could require a whole range of upgrades and you are far from a friction-free process. It’s not as bad as upgrading to a new PC, but having lived through a smartphone upgrade process somewhat recently, it’s getting pretty close.

Despite these concerns, the smartphone market is impressively strong, with shipments in the range of 1.5 billion a year. But it seems clear we are entering a new era for the industry and the implications of longer smartphone lifetimes are bound to be far-reaching for device makers, component suppliers, app developers, and more. How companies adjust to this new reality of limited growth will be very interesting to watch.

Advances in smart TVs, set-top boxes, and cord-cutting services have driven some important improvements in TV viewing for most consumers. But there’s still one glaring hole when it comes to a truly modern connected TV experience: synchronized second screen content.

The vast majority (75-80% according to a recent survey conducted by TECHnalysis Research of over 3,000 consumers across the US, UK, Germany, Brazil and China) of device-owning people who watch TV admit to using their additional devices, such as notebooks, tablets, and smartphones, while viewing. So the obvious question is, why not try and link the two device experiences together?

In fact, the case for doing so gets even stronger when you look into what people are doing on those second screens while they’re watching TV. In the case of PCs, the top five activities conducted on a PC while watching TV are: browsing the web in general, reading personal email, online shopping, browsing the web for content tied to what they’re watching (over 39% said they did this), and reading the news.

On tablets, the top five activities are browsing the web in general, browsing for content tied to what they’re watching (just over 38% of tablet owners responded to this option), reading personal email, reading the news, and social media. Interestingly, for 25-34-year olds, the top activity on a tablet while also watching TV was browsing for TV content-related information.

Even on smartphones, there’s a strong link. Not surprisingly, texting/messaging is the most common smartphone activity while also watching TV, followed by social media, general web browsing, browsing for TV content-related information (36% of respondents), and then reading personal email. Interestingly, texting about content on TV was actually the sixth most common activity on smartphones across all age groups, but was the second most common for 45-54-year olds.

The key takeaway from all this is that nearly 40% of people surveyed are already making the effort to manually tie together what they’re watching on the big screen to the small screen in front of them. Imagine how much higher that percentage could go if there was some mechanism for connecting the devices automatically?[pullquote]Nearly 40% of people surveyed are already making the effort to manually tie together what they’re watching on the big screen to the small screen in front of them. Imagine how much higher that percentage could go if there was some mechanism for connecting the devices automatically?”[/pullquote]

Of course, this is easier said than done. There’s no standardized method of transmitting what people are currently watching on their TVs to other devices, although audio analysis technologies (similar in concept to what Shazam does for music) can—in theory, at least—recognize what people are watching by listening to the audio content of the program. Plus, these technologies can do so in a way that is independent of a show’s programmed time slot, and can compensate for DVR recordings, streaming from the web, and other common forms of TV viewing. The problem is, these recognition technologies have been around for a long time—some quick web searches pointed to initial efforts from almost 10 years ago—and none have found mainstream acceptance.

To my mind, this seems like a great big data/cloud analytics opportunity, so I have to presume work continues to evolve in this area. Even once you can accurately identify what people are watching, however, that still has to be translated into a range of web-based “responses.” At a simple level, taking people to a particular program’s website is a reasonable first step, but there are a whole range of rich opportunities for linking to related content, shopping opportunities, and much more. Plus, with some additional intelligence, there would be an additional level of personalization that would be possible. In other words, if you and I were both watching the same program, we wouldn’t necessarily receive the same links for further browsing and exploration.

Like many of the technologies I expect we’ll see at the upcoming 2016 CES, the concept of a smart, connected TV viewing experience isn’t new. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t an opportunity to leverage the enormous range of devices and connectivity options now ubiquitous in homes around the world to drive a new set of experiences consumers will truly appreciate. After all, in the tech business, timing is everything.

When Adele sings “Hello,” people are clearly listening—to the record-setting tune of over 3.3 million album purchases in a single week. When you greet your smart device with a verbal introduction, however, well, let’s just say the results aren’t quite as clear.

Though they were hailed as “The Next Big Thing” when they were first introduced, Smart Assistants, or Personal Assistants, such as Siri, Google Now, and Cortana, haven’t exactly torn up the charts. Yes, there was a big initial splash—especially after the initial release of Siri on the iPhone 4S in October 2011—but there has been an equivalent, if not even larger, backlash since then. In fact, Siri quickly devolved from something people marveled at to something people joked about.

To be fair, Apple has made significant improvements to Siri since then, and the introduction of both Google Now and Microsoft’s Cortana has raised the bar for the Smart Assistants category as a whole.

In order to get a better sense of where things stand now, I included a few questions on the recent TECHnalysis Research Consumer Device Usage study of 3,012 people across five countries (US, UK, Germany, Brazil and China) to find out who may be using these verbal assistance-based capabilities, what they’re using them for, and what they think about them overall.

The results show that while Smart Assistants are making progress, they still have a long way to go before they really become mainstream tools, particularly with older consumers. The chart below shows which age groups are using which Smart Assistants, and which use none at all.

©2015, TECHnalysis Research LLC

While there are a number of very interesting points that can be gleaned from this chart, the first thing that stands out is that nearly half of all respondents across all age groups (Total) said they don’t use Smart Assistants at all, and another 9% don’t know what any of the Smart/Personal Assistants actually are. Amongst the 1,024 US respondents, the result was just over 50% saying they don’t use Smart Assistants and 7% who don’t know what they are. (Note that the totals add up to more than 100% because respondents could select all the Smart Assistants they use, with the average number they use being 1.2.) So, for both worldwide (WW) and the US, only 43% of device-owning consumers said they use Smart Assistants. Clearly, this suggests that more work needs to be done to make these voice-based capabilities more compelling (and, likely, more accurate) before a much wider audience will actually use them.

Breaking the results down by age group, only in the 18-24 and 25-34 age groups are there more people who use Smart Assistants than don’t (in the US results, only 25-34s). Also, there is actually a smaller percentage of 18-24-year old Millennials using Smart Assistants than 25-34-year old Gen X’ers (47% vs. 62% in the US and 52% vs. 57% worldwide). These somewhat surprising numbers suggest that younger device users are not necessarily the most proactive when it comes to using the latest features, or that voice-based control isn’t as interesting, or necessary, for younger users as it is for slightly older users (or, most likely, some combination of these two possibilities). Regardless, it reflects a subtle, but potentially important shift about the expectations that future generations of device owners may have.

Interestingly, the activities for which Smart Assistants were used (by the 43% who used them) was actually very similar across age groups, both worldwide and in the US. The chart below shows the top-level results for the full five-country sample of 1,286 Smart Assistant users.

©2015, TECHnalysis Research LLC

The top activity by far was requests for information searches, followed by asking for directions. (One difference in the US results is that over 59% of US respondents asked for driving directions, versus just under 53% worldwide). Asking to do certain activities on the device, such as play music, launch apps, adjust settings, etc., was done by fewer than half of Smart Assistant users. Truly “smart” activities, such as using a Smart Assistant to make suggestions of other things, music, restaurants, etc., were only done by 1 in 5 Smart Assistant users.[pullquote]It is a bit disappointing to see how few people are using Smart Assistants. It’s also frustrating to see how little they’re being used for truly smart activities.”[/pullquote]

Of course, the other big data point from the first chart was the dominance of Google Now usage over other Smart Assistants, particularly among younger users. It turns out Google Now also edged out both Cortana and Siri on an overall satisfaction rating as well, but just barely, with an average of 3.8 (on a scale of 5), versus 3.7 for Cortana, and 3.6 for Siri. In the US, Google Now and Cortana were statistically tied at 3.9, while Siri had a 3.5.

The notion of a voice-based interface, and the concept of talking at your devices was more science fiction than science fact for a very long time, so the fact that we’re making any progress in this challenging area is unquestionably a good thing. Still, expectations continue to be very (and probably unrealistically) high for these technologies, so it is a bit disappointing to see how few people are using Smart Assistants. It’s also frustrating to see how little they’re being used for truly smart activities—the most common usages are arguably little more than simple typing replacement.

There’s no question that truly Smart Assistants will be a critical part of future devices and services we use, but it’s also increasingly clear that we still have a long way to go before we reach that digital nirvana.

The truth is, it’s a bit of a guessing game—even when you ask people their intentions.

Nevertheless, as we enter the holiday shopping season, trying to figure out what devices consumers plan to purchase next becomes a bit of a sport. There are historical trends to study, Black Friday and Cyber Monday ads to pore over, and gut instincts to trust, but ultimately, no one ever really knows for sure what consumer technology products will be winners and what will be losers in a given timeframe.

Despite the uncertainty, people continue to investigate the topic because it’s kind of fun (in a sick, sort of way, I suppose), and because it is critically important to the future of many companies and many individuals.

In my case, my firm, TECHnalysis Research, recently completely a thorough device usage study of over 3,000 consumers across the US, UK, Germany, Brazil and China. The focus of the online study was to get more insight into how people are really using their core devices (PCs, tablets, smartphones, TVs and wearables), but we also asked what devices individuals planned to purchase over the next year.

Note that this doesn’t necessarily translate into what they plan to purchase this holiday season (and most of the responses were actually collected in late September/early October, before most people have planned out their holiday shopping), but it does give a good overall sense of device priorities.

A summary of results for the entire 3,012 person sample are shown below, followed by the US-only results (1,024 consumers).

Not surprisingly, smartphones with 5” and larger screens continue to top the list, as many consumers around the world (and even in the US) have yet to make the transition to these incredibly useful devices. What’s interesting, however, is that several PC form factors did well on both a worldwide and US basis. Notebooks were number two across the total of all five countries and desktops were number four. What was surprising, however, was that in the US, notebooks and desktops actually tied for second.

Despite the PC industry’s recent doldrums, the release of Windows 10 has clearly inspired more interest in the category, and that should lead to a reasonably solid 2016 for consumer PC sales. In addition, there’s a large base of much older PCs in need of upgrades, and that, combined with growing interest in PC gaming (thanks to the popularity of things like game streaming channel Twitch), is what likely contributed to the interest in desktop PCs.

Smart TVs were the third most common category for planned purchases on a worldwide basis, but took the fifth spot, just behind non-connected 32”+ size flat panel TVs, in the US. Larger 8”+ tablets were fifth worldwide and sixth in the US.

Looking briefly at the other countries, the top two choices in the UK (in order) were 5”+ smartphones and smart TVs, in Brazil it was notebooks and 5”+ smartphones, and in both China and Germany it was 5”+ smartphones and notebooks.

For the sake of comparison, the same questions were asked in a similar study just over a year ago. The top three responses for the multi-country (WW) group and the top two responses in the US were the same this year as last year. The most noticeable difference was the large jump in desktop PCs, a category that nearly everyone has written off for dead. In addition, there was a modest decline in smaller smartphones, a larger decline for smaller sub-8” tablets, and a modest increase in wearables.

Having conducted decades worth of buying-intention surveys, I can tell you with certainty that next year’s reality won’t match what this year’s results show (people exaggerate their buying intentions, change their minds, and adjust their priorities, etc.) Nevertheless, these types of questions do provide a sense of consumers’ mindsets, which can lead to important insights into where markets may go.

So, if we see a resurgence in desktop PCs next year, remember: you heard it here first.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Enjoy time with family and friends and, hopefully, away from some of your devices!

The vast majority of attention focused on wearables has been on devices with an integrated screen, such as the Apple Watch. The general consensus seems to be that screens are necessary to provide the kinds of notifications and other forms of information for which many believe wearables are well suited.

But a new breed of screenless wearables are starting to make their mark and I believe they will become an increasingly important part of the wearables industry, especially for wristworn-wearables like smart watches. The latest entries come via luxury watch maker Movado, with help from HP, but there are other interesting examples, including the Chronos add-on disc for traditional watches, that are coming soon.

For certain types of information, such as text messages or maps, screens are really the only option. However, at these very early stages of wearables’ evolution, it’s worth asking important questions about whether or not that type of information is the most appropriate or best data for wearables to offer.

Screenless wearables are clearly more limited in the type and range of information they can offer, but also have the possibility of being more effective with a simpler set of information. Leveraging haptics technologies that provide physical feedback to your body—and then adding in audio-based information—screenless wearables are likely to drive forward completely new user interface paradigms and methods of interaction. Used in conjunction with smartphones, they can also provide a great deal of detailed visual information to the user/wearer of the device—but in a different way.

As mentioned above, screens are great for delivering certain types of information, but they bring with them a number of issues. First of all, they immediately date a device and, arguably, limit their useful lifetime. Screen technology continues to evolve and improve at such a rapid pace that it’s easy to spot older technology by simply looking at the type and quality of the screen it has. Five years from now, today’s wearables screens will look horribly outdated. Compared to many watches—whose designs can still look fresh even several decades later—that’s a step in the wrong direction.

Another problem with screen-based wearables is that they can be a bit too good at notifying both you and others around you that a new piece of data or notification has come in. When your screen lights up your wrist, it’s announcing to the world (and especially those right around you), that something is going on with you. In some cases, it might even be possible for people to read those screens—even in situations that you would prefer that they can’t.

For those of us with older eyes, many of whom grew up as part of a generation who are more accustomed to regularly wear watches, the opposite problem can also occur. Reading a screen designed to fit on your wrist can be a real challenge for many people.

Yet another limitation with screens on wearables is the impact they have on the battery life of the device. Screen-based devices typically measure their battery life in hours or maybe a day, but screenless devices’ battery lives are measured in weeks.[pullquote]I think the limitations of a screenless device could actually end up driving very creative new solutions for device interactions.”[/pullquote]

The trick to making screenless devices effective is going to be smart usage of physical feedback mechanisms and the development of new user interface paradigms. Figuring out how to do things like leverage waveform synthesis to create a range of haptic feedback-based sensations could be incredibly important in creating new types of interaction models. Combine that with some visual cues and a high-quality audio experience—speak to the device and receive useful audio information and/or notifications, for example—and you could set the groundwork for an entirely different way of thinking about and using devices.

Doing this kind of work won’t be easy, but I think the limitations of a screenless device could actually end up driving very creative new solutions for device interactions. In addition, work done in this area should lead to the disappearance of the more obvious aspects of technology, while at the same time delivering more seamless integration of the key capabilities it enables into our everyday lives.

Science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke’s famous quote about the relationship between technology and magic—“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”—has proven to be a remarkably prescient commentary on the state of technology and its impact on people for over 50 years now.

The problem today is that people have become too accustomed to the magic, and it’s getting harder and harder to develop new “tricks.” Most consumer’s expectations for what technology can do have become so high, that they’re starting to look for and demand things that technology should do.

One critical technology capability that hasn’t been realized yet is pain-free interconnections between multiple devices, networks, and services. Sure, there have been great improvements in physical connectivity solutions like USB3 and Thunderbolt 3, along with important improvements in wireless networks like 802.11ac, Bluetooth LE, and Zigbee. We’ve even seen some important steps forward in interconnect protocols, such as AllJoyn, OIC, and Threads—though there certainly are plenty of challenges (and standards battles) to be solved and resolved there.

Even with those developments, however, the process of making multiple devices in a home (or work environment) seamlessly work together is far from magical. Frankly, it’s often maddening. Configuration challenges, set-up hassles, software installation snafus, networking problems, and more often turn what should be an exciting new experience—firing up a new device or service for the first time—into painful drudgery.

As the number of devices and services that people own and regularly use continues to grow, the problem is just getting worse. Even if you can get a peripheral to work with one device, for example, making it work the way it’s supposed to across multiple devices, is far from guaranteed. Similarly, accessing a new service or application from one device might be straightforward, but making it work with several of your devices can be a nightmare.

What we really need is a capability that automatically discovers all the relevant devices in your home (or work environment) and automatically, or “automagically”, not only connects to them, but enables their full capabilities. In other words, not only do the devices become seamlessly and reliably connected—valuable in itself—but any necessary configuration to make it do what it’s supposed to do happens as well—the real prize.[pullquote]What we really need is a capability that automatically discovers all the relevant devices in your home and ‘automagically’ not only connects to them, but enables their full capabilities.”[/pullquote]

Technically, this autodiscovery capability is sometimes called enumeration, but even to today’s jaded consumers, it’s bound to feel like magic. Typical (and even relatively technical) consumers and business users have suffered far too long with having to manually configure and enable each device’s capabilities, and as a result, haven’t really been able to appreciate all that their devices could offer. In fact, autodiscovery might give many consumers a new-found appreciation for many of their existing devices and/or services as it could finally enable them to use these devices or services to their fullest extent.

Though it might seem like we should have had these capabilities for a while now, it turns out that to do this accurately and do it well is very challenging. Thankfully, numerous vendors, including Intel and Microsoft among others, are working hard to enable these capabilities. Leveraging a combination of new hardware and software functionality, they’re starting to make this magical dream a reality.

As we move into the world of connected homes, connected cars and other smart things, the ability to not only connect but fully leverage the intelligence they offer is going to be essential. It’s simply too much to expect average users, whether in consumer or commercial environments, to be able to configure all these devices, let alone fully take advantage of the potential they offer. Plus, many of the most important benefits that new devices and services are going to offer will be dependent on their ability to connect to other devices—essentially, a network effect.

That’s where the “magic” of technology needs to step in and ensure that the real value of all these new devices doesn’t get lost in the set-up shuffle. Without these kinds of autodiscovery improvements, many of the kind of innovations these new devices and services hope to offer could end up being for naught.

The more time I spend delving into the world of the Internet of Things (IOT), the more convinced I am that it’s biggest impact won’t be technological, but business related. Of course, we still have to get off the crazy hype cycle that IOT is on before this can really happen (and we’re likely still several years away from that.) But the changes will come, and they will be big.

To be sure, there are some profound technological developments that will both drive and be derived from the world of IOT. Add intelligence to lots of devices and connect them all together, and the result becomes nearly inevitable.

However, the manner in which business will need to occur—and how companies can react to those new business environments—will likely have an even bigger impact on the tech market landscape. It’s a classic case of disruption, and it’s bound to lead to both the downfall of some current tech giants and the birth/maturation of new ones.

Even now, in the early stages of IOT, we’re starting to see big impacts on business models, especially when compared to traditional IT products. For example, classic TCO (total cost of ownership) and ROI (return on investment) arguments for many critically important IOT products aren’t having the same kind of impact we’ve seen with IT products.

In the past, if you could build a strong-enough TCO/ROI case for a big IT tech expenditure, then you were well on your way to solid sales and success with that product. However, solid TCO/ROI models for IOT-driven solutions like saving energy costs on lighting or HVAC are not translating directly to sales for companies like Enlighted Inc. The company, which sells sensor-driven lighting and occupancy awareness systems for commercial buildings, instead has been forced to build complicated business models that take into account things like future energy credits. Not exactly a simple thing to sell.

The problem for these types of commercial IOT companies is that to really get the benefits of IOT, you often need to do very large (and very expensive) deployments. Smart cities sound like a great concept, for example, until you realize that to truly get the payback for a smart city, you would have to do massive deployments of sensors, gateways, software, services and more. Sure, the results could be great, but there are few cities that have the money to spare to tackle such a project.

This also highlights one of the current fallacies of IOT. While there’s been a great deal of talk about new revenue generation possibilities—such as for smart cities—the fact is, the few real success stories in IOT have been around cost reductions. Now, decreasing operational costs is still a good thing, but it’s very different than increasing revenues, and businesses need to build their business models and business approaches to reflect that reality.

The business model challenges extend beyond complete IOT solutions to devices and components, as well. Semiconductor vendors like ARM, Intel, Qualcomm, nVidia and others like to talk about the tens or hundreds of billions of connected devices that they can power in this new world of IOT. But, to make that happen, they have to move from a financial model where their revenue could be measured in hundreds or at least tens of dollars per device, down to one measured in single-digit dollars, and soon, cents per device. To put it more bluntly, 50 billion devices with 50¢ of semiconductor content, does not a growth business make—compared to today’s 1 billion+ devices at $25-$35 per device.[pullquote]There are still enormous questions about where the real value in a multi-component, multi-vendor IOT solution actually resides.”[/pullquote]

Network vendors like Cisco who tout the enormous amounts of network traffic that these billions of devices will generate won’t necessarily fare much better. Semiconductor improvements and practical realities are going to demand that more of the analytics and data analysis that are a core part of the IOT experience happen at an intelligent endpoint, and don’t need to, nor should (for security reasons), traverse a network.

On top of all this, there are still enormous questions about where the real value in a multi-component, multi-vendor IOT solution actually resides. Is it with the systems integrator, the software maker, the carriers, the network providers, the device makers, or some combination thereof? Divide the pie into too many pieces, and the shares start to get pretty small. Plus, it’s not clear that companies (or individuals, in the case of consumer-focused IOT) will be willing to pay for any additional hardware. Finally, each IOT project will have to address who gets access to the data, and who and how they can monetize it (if at all).

Answers to these kinds of difficult questions—like the fully realized potential of IOT—are still many years away. However, they do start to suggest that companies which have been in more traditional hardware or software businesses, will have to start rethinking their revenue generation methods. It’s likely that they’ll have to create ongoing services that somehow leverage the unique characteristics of their traditional offerings and start charging for those services instead of their traditional products. This transition won’t be easy, but it typifies the kind of challenges that IOT will be bringing to the tech market overall.

Ready or not, here it comes.

That’s essentially the position businesses find themselves with regard to mobile technology and its influence on not just IT but all aspects of their organizations. The confluence of smartphones, tablets and cloud-based computing services, along with a growing percentage of millennial and Gen Y employees, is leading to a fundamental shift in how businesses are contemplating all things mobile.

There’s a growing sense of inevitability about this mobility trend. Everyone knows it’s going to happen. However, on the map to a mobile-optimized organization, not only is the route unclear, it’s also not at all obvious what the final destination is. This makes navigating the path from the present to an ill-defined future a particularly challenging task.

Thankfully, there are some relatively obvious—though still challenging—goals along the way. Workplace and work device flexibility, for example, are waypoints along the road to a mobile-savvy enterprise toward which many organizations are now striving. Employees, particularly younger ones, are looking for the freedom to be able to do their work on any device, in any location. As simple as that sounds, however, implementing the infrastructure to enable this kind of device and location independence can be difficult, expensive, and often requires some fundamental changes to core IT policies, structure, capabilities, and more.

As a result, many IT organizations take more of a Henry Ford approach to device independence: employees can use whatever device they want, as long as it’s a company-purchased Windows PC that’s actively managed by IT and uses company-purchased or approved connectivity options. Okay, well, maybe not that bad, but it’s probably a lot closer to reality than many IT leaders are willing to admit.

Even if companies are actively embracing BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) and/or other device choice policies, that doesn’t mean they’ve really embraced mobility. In fact, device choice is just the first step.

The real impact of mobility only begins to take hold when companies start rethinking processes, procedures, services, activities, expectations, measurement methods, and many other functions at the very core of how businesses operate. To do that, IT needs to start reworking existing applications or, even better, building new custom mobile applications which take into account a broader mobility mentality.

Despite a few high-profile efforts to do just that (think Apple/IBM), the reality is only a small percentage of companies have done anything more than a few experiments in the area of custom mobile applications. Plus, many of those efforts are actually only being done on behalf of senior management. According to a survey of IT professionals conducted by TECHnalysis Research, while most custom PC applications are deployed to all employees (over 70%), custom tablet or smartphone applications are designed more for senior executives (50%) with only 40% of these mobile apps being deployed to the full range of employees.

However, even the availability of mobile devices and mobile applications does not mean a company has completely embraced mobility. At its core, the move to mobility requires a change in the way companies think about data and how they access, use, and secure it. Mobile devices are forcing companies to deal with these key issues.

Some companies have run into issues with mobility because they haven’t thought through these implications. Instead, they’ve discovered only dipping their toes into the tepid waters of the mobile pool can actually cause more harm than good. Security breaches, lost data, frustrated workers, IT ill-will, and lots of other bad results can befall organizations that don’t fully embrace the mobile mindset and all it entails.[pullquote]Mobility changes everything in business, but it doesn’t replace everything.”[/pullquote]

At the same time, it’s easy to fall into the opposite trap of thinking mobility supplants everything. Despite its importance, mobility doesn’t and shouldn’t come at the expense of other non-mobile devices and application. In other words, while mobility changes everything, it doesn’t replace everything. Traditional PCs and custom enterprise apps aren’t going away just because you add mobility. Instead, organizations need to think about their mobile devices and mobile applications as “companions” to their existing devices, by using the devices and applications best suited to each task and figuring out ways to make them work together.

It’s not an easy process, to be sure. But, if companies really want to innovate, they also need to think creatively about how they integrate mobility into their business mindset.

(If you’d like to learn more, you can also check out the webinar I did on the same topic: Harvard Business Review Webinar: Mobility In the Enterprise, Proactive or Reactive?)