News You might have missed: Friday, October 20th, 2017

Windows Fall Creator Update

Windows 10 Fall Creators Update includes a number of new features, including a replacement for OneDrive Placeholders, support for Windows Mixed Reality, the ability to have a better workflow between Windows 10 PCs and iPhones and Android phones and an improved Photos app experience. For enterprise users, the added security features with Windows Defender are probably the most compelling updates. Mixed Reality support is probably the feature that will be the focus on the holiday advertising.

Via Microsoft  

  • I have been using Windows 10 Fall Creator since it has been available to Insiders back in April and I have to say I have been enjoying most of all the UI improvements across the board. It really now feels like a much modern operating system although the things that never change make you realize that it is Windows after all – mostly the file structure and the language.
  • If I had to pick my top 3 features I would say improved inking, My People, and Photo Remix. Especially on Surface devices, inking is a game changer for things like document reviews. My People brings the people that matter to you to the front of your workflow in an intelligent way so that preference of communication channel is accounted for. While Photo Remix is not something I use every day, for me, it is the best example of how Windows 10 wants to move from productivity to creation.
  • While there are not many people using Edge on iPhone and Android to really benefit from a wider set of functionalities just the acknowledgment that there must be a focus between phone and PC is a huge deal. This is how people build their workflow today and Apple has been first in line in exploiting these changes to create a strong tie between Mac and iPhone and Mac and iPad. Yet, there are way more iPhone owners with a PC than a Mac and this should be a priority for Microsoft, especially when it comes to making Surface appealing.
  • I also think that Windows 10 Creator Update on Surface really shows the best of Microsoft which of course made the launch of the Surface Book 2 a perfectly timed one.

Surface Book 2

With the latest 8th Gen Intel Core processors and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 and 1060 discrete graphics options, Surface Book 2 gives all the power you want or need in the design we have been accustomed to since the first Surface Book. Surface Book 2 with the 13” weighs 3.38lbs and the 15” Surface Book 2 at 4.2lbs. Surface Book 2 13” will be available for pre-order beginning November 9th in the United States and additional markets around the world, along with Surface Book 2 15” in the United States at any Microsoft Store and Microsoft.com. Delivery will begin on November 16th

Via Microsoft

  • This is the first true update to the Surface Book line. The original Book was updated about one year after launch but more to address some of the issues of the first generation that really deliver an update
  • I see the Book 2 as Microsoft delivering on the promise of serving a wide audience especially of demanding users in the top segment of the market. Giving options on form factors but also power and capabilities.
  • Not a device for everybody for sure, not just because of the price, but because not everybody needs that much horse-power.
  • The target audience I see aside from the obvious higher-end customers are users who are interested in Surface Studio but are too mobile to be able to justify their purchase. In tablet mode with the support of the Surface Dial, Surface Book 2 will deliver the same Studio experience in a more compact and mobile form factor.
  • With more PC vendors wanting to focus mostly in the high-end I am sure Book 2 will raise the bar on what we can see coming out from Lenovo, Dell, and HP in particular.

Samsung Creates Single IoT Platform: SmartThings Cloud

This week at its Annual Developer Conference in San Francisco, Samsung took the first step towards a company that can better connect the dots across different areas to deliver a superior experience. That step was the unification of the three pre-existing platforms SmartThings, Samsung Connect, and ARTIK under the new SmartThings Cloud platform.

Via Samsung  

  • While Samsung’s executives did not share many details on tools and SDKs a single “go to” platform should certainly make things easier for developers and partners.
  • What Samsung’s mobile lead DJ Koh outlined was a vision of consistency of experience across Samsung’s devices. Something that many have been expecting from Samsung for a while but that because of the way the company is structured had yet to happen. This is now finally changing.
  • SmartThings Cloud will not be limited to Samsung devices only. It is an open platform with open tools. I am sure over time we will get a better understanding of what functionalities will be limited to Samsung devices, which theoretically should have a superior experience as they can be fully controlled.
  • A critical part of the platform in my view is the security layer that ARTIK brings to developers and partners. This will appeal to both consumers and enterprises and could serve as a strong differentiator for Samsung. While security is rarely a selling proposition in the consumer segment, we see a much higher priority given to security when it comes to the home.

Samsung launches Bixby 2.0 and Project Ambience

Bixby was launched with the Galaxy S8 but suffered a slow rollout and high criticism for not being “smart.” Bixby 2.0 promises to be ubiquitous, personal. Bixby everywhere will be achieved in two ways. First, more Samsung devices will ship with Bixby inside – the first TV with Bixby will ship in 2018. Second, Project Ambiance will allow adding Bixby to non-Samsung devices either through a dongle or through a chip to be embedded in a product. Samsung did not disclose when either the dongle or the chip will be commercial.

Via Samsung  

  • The big challenge for Samsung in my view is to transition consumers’ thinking from Bixby as a user interface on one device to an interface across devices and then to a full-blown assistant.
  • One of Viv’s founders was on stage at the keynote talking about how all assistants today fail because they are not personal and not particularly smart. A statement that most would agree with. However, we have not had a chance thus far to actually see Viv in action and Samsung will still have to prove Bixby can deliver with the added Viv intelligence.
  • Ultimately, I still think Bixby’s strength will be in making our home experience less painful more frictionless. This can be a huge value add in its own right as we move from connected home to smart home. Setting the right expectations in the messaging will help consumers understand and appreciate Bixby for what it is. This seems something that even internally at Samsung has to be clarified as we heard different messages on stage.
  • The idea of being able to make devices that you have in the home smart by adding a dongle is quite smart in itself, especially when you talk about white goods that have a long replacement cycle. How this will work in reality beyond a speaker scenario like the one demoed on stage is unclear, however. The job of a speaker is quite easy but understanding, for instance, what adding the dongle to a fridge will help me do, is less obvious.
  • For other manufacturers, I think the appeal of Project Ambient will be to be the ability to add smartness at a lower cost than developing their own solution. Yet why they would add Bixby over an Alexa or Google Assistant is not clear to me. Especially given they are more likely to directly compete with Samsung than with Amazon or Google.
  • For now, of course, what Project Ambience shows is the power of having a semiconductor business that can deliver an end to end solution from chip to cloud platform.

 

 

Published by

Carolina Milanesi

Carolina is a Principal Analyst at Creative Strategies, Inc, a market intelligence and strategy consulting firm based in Silicon Valley and recognized as one of the premier sources of quantitative and qualitative research and insights in tech. At Creative Strategies, Carolina focuses on consumer tech across the board. From hardware to services, she analyzes today to help predict and shape tomorrow. In her prior role as Chief of Research at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, she drove thought leadership research by marrying her deep understanding of global market dynamics with the wealth of data coming from ComTech’s longitudinal studies on smartphones and tablets. Prior to her ComTech role, Carolina spent 14 years at Gartner, most recently as their Consumer Devices Research VP and Agenda Manager. In this role, she led the forecast and market share teams on smartphones, tablets, and PCs. She spent most of her time advising clients from VC firms, to technology providers, to traditional enterprise clients. Carolina is often quoted as an industry expert and commentator in publications such as The Financial Times, Bloomberg, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. She regularly appears on BBC, Bloomberg TV, Fox, NBC News and other networks. Her Twitter account was recently listed in the “101 accounts to follow to make Twitter more interesting” by Wired Italy.

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