Have been thinking about wearables since GSMA World in Barcelona this February and with the launch of Apple's iWatch I have started to formalise my opinions.
Setting aside the questions of does the device look suitable to take a place on my wrist the biggest question is what does an iWatch offer that I don't get from my handset?
The majority of Optimists tell me that if offers the opportunity to open a wide range of health benefits thanks to the App developer ecosytem taking the lifeloging data and improving what I do day to day. I have looked at eHealth for quite some time and on the whole the processes that have been designed to make medicine better via technology have failed because of the silo nature of the stake holders. What has happened is that the increased data available has been used by the Insurance industry to raise premiums and or decline treatments.
Given what we have seen about breaches in data security by technology firms I do not hold out any hope that my data in anonymised given that the registration/purchasing functions used by Apple. Given that my working life requires long periods sat down and limited opportunities to exercise it would not be a surprise if the Actuary placed me in a high risk group and incentivised changes by financial penalties. Why should I make it easy for them by fitting a monitoring device that records how poor my time is used when it comes to health?
If I want to improve I think that I would invest in a Polar HRM system for the periods of the week when I am active and record the results in a Notebook rather than online rather than strap on an iWatch and give away health data.
Showing posts with label Wearables. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wearables. Show all posts
Monday, September 29, 2014
Tuesday, October 01, 2013
So will we be wearing our next mobile phone?
The excitement over the summer has been about wearables when it comes to mobile technology. Will our next device be in the form of smartglasses or smartwatches or even a smartsuit?
To be honest having got into some of the futurology that saw mobile phones becoming just a piece of jewellery in the form of a single earring I have a bad track record. I thought that we would be living in smart houses that sensed everything that went on and the handset would become the ultimate remote controller. I saw the mobile network morphing into a service provider that would be trusted to hold and manage all your personal data. To be honest these were forecasts back in 20th century and Google and Facebook had not become the cornerstones of many lives and we did not thing the NSA would read all our data. The Mobile Network was going to become everyones personal assistant and we would all have exemplary concierge levels of service.
What I do think that is that we will not live with a single connected device rather we will have a number of devices which will have a personal network connection to a modem that offers highspeed broadband and voice services. Some people who are happy with "popular" music can live with Spotify and YouTube whilst others will want a music device that plays back their musical collection. The same can be said for e-reader, camera, media consumption screen. Some are happy to map their run using an app on a phone whilst others have a more detailed record tanks to a Garmin Watch, in future the Watch will connect to the web via your personal modem.
As Augmented Reality develops we might expect the specialist glasses to become contact lenses or a protection device as seen with fighter pilots head up displays.
As healthcare gets involved we could start to see a number of devices that are warn to sense vital signs and mobility. We can expect to these developed for the Defence and Old Aged markets before they become mainstream. We might also be able to see tags used to enable smart seats, beds or toilets in connecting them to a mobile device and using proximity it will allow differentiation of different people within a building. These devices are likely to be manufactured thanks to 3D printing development rather than Samsung/Apple/Google design labs and Chinese factories.
The big issue will be that the deployment of smart buildings and thus smart cities is going to be the ability to get political buy in and consumer uptake. Very many of the senior executives I meet alongside senior politicians and very rich individuals do not carry a phone and have no wish to do so. Thus in areas of New York, Switzerland, London, Paris and Berlin now can to build the infrastructure needed to mesh new services together?
I think that we will see a number of prototypes come to market when it comes to wearables most of which will fail because we would be embarrassed to wear them and be seen as some form of cyborg. If the wearables could be made to look like "normal" products then fear that you are being "stalked" would force social pressure to stop use. Would you want someone with a wearable to share the changing facilities with you at your gym?
My advice to Mobile Networks invest in building the fastest best quality network, develop tools to manage ID, offer storage and form federations to innovate service fail to that and expect to fall.
To be honest having got into some of the futurology that saw mobile phones becoming just a piece of jewellery in the form of a single earring I have a bad track record. I thought that we would be living in smart houses that sensed everything that went on and the handset would become the ultimate remote controller. I saw the mobile network morphing into a service provider that would be trusted to hold and manage all your personal data. To be honest these were forecasts back in 20th century and Google and Facebook had not become the cornerstones of many lives and we did not thing the NSA would read all our data. The Mobile Network was going to become everyones personal assistant and we would all have exemplary concierge levels of service.
What I do think that is that we will not live with a single connected device rather we will have a number of devices which will have a personal network connection to a modem that offers highspeed broadband and voice services. Some people who are happy with "popular" music can live with Spotify and YouTube whilst others will want a music device that plays back their musical collection. The same can be said for e-reader, camera, media consumption screen. Some are happy to map their run using an app on a phone whilst others have a more detailed record tanks to a Garmin Watch, in future the Watch will connect to the web via your personal modem.
As Augmented Reality develops we might expect the specialist glasses to become contact lenses or a protection device as seen with fighter pilots head up displays.
As healthcare gets involved we could start to see a number of devices that are warn to sense vital signs and mobility. We can expect to these developed for the Defence and Old Aged markets before they become mainstream. We might also be able to see tags used to enable smart seats, beds or toilets in connecting them to a mobile device and using proximity it will allow differentiation of different people within a building. These devices are likely to be manufactured thanks to 3D printing development rather than Samsung/Apple/Google design labs and Chinese factories.
The big issue will be that the deployment of smart buildings and thus smart cities is going to be the ability to get political buy in and consumer uptake. Very many of the senior executives I meet alongside senior politicians and very rich individuals do not carry a phone and have no wish to do so. Thus in areas of New York, Switzerland, London, Paris and Berlin now can to build the infrastructure needed to mesh new services together?
I think that we will see a number of prototypes come to market when it comes to wearables most of which will fail because we would be embarrassed to wear them and be seen as some form of cyborg. If the wearables could be made to look like "normal" products then fear that you are being "stalked" would force social pressure to stop use. Would you want someone with a wearable to share the changing facilities with you at your gym?
My advice to Mobile Networks invest in building the fastest best quality network, develop tools to manage ID, offer storage and form federations to innovate service fail to that and expect to fall.
Sunday, September 29, 2013
Some thoughts about the recent developments in the handset space
Well the summer has been an eventful one for Handset Manufacturers. We have had the expected refresh of the benchmark for smartphone from Apple and whilst they have managed to break sales records thanks to clever marketing and management of supply they didn't in my opinion retake leadership of the sector. Samsung continues to drive ahead with the expansion of the Galaxy brand thanks to a refresh of the Note and the introduction of a wristwatch form factor as remote control/2nd Screen. The car crashes have been spectacular with Nokia exiting the market via a fire sale to Microsoft quickly bettered by the offer for BlackBerry by Fairfax. Have not started analysis of the performance of HTC, LG, Sony who seem to have become casualties in the OS wars of recent years not server enough to kill them but bad enough to make them marginal players.
On the Apple front I was pleased to see just like others in the fashion industry they have given up trying to make size zero yet slimmer. I just hope that they and others will take note of the reviews of the two new iPhones side by side that report the 5c feels better in the hand and start adding curves. But please don't go over the top with a Kim Kardashian inspired monster, if that were to happen it would be on a par with the Pink Motorola V3 razr and signal that innovation had died and marketing was going to kill the business. On a negative front the changes seen with iO7 seem to be cosmetic rather than a genuine shift that takes into account that a 4G handset is a very different device to one that spends most of its time on Wifi. Perhaps next year the designers will rock up with a new OS that moves the world forward rather than paint lipstick on a fading star?
Samsung is a company that always surprises me when ever I interface with it. It's old school centralised command and control structure and long term planning seems inflexible yet surprises in getting the market right. Unlike any of the other Handset Guys it still seems to value it's channel partners and has strong relationships with the mobile networks who after all will sell the majority of its handsets. Yet design by committee does seem to be throwing up some strange selections. The Mobile Phone business has spent twenty years telling people that don't need to wear a device on the wrist to tell the time and yet they come out and launch such a device. Looking at the functionality I would have hoped that they would have followed Polar and combined fitness applications alongside the ability to be a second screen for a tablet/phone.
What can I say about Nokia without sounding like Tomi Ahonen? I would point out that when Nokia overtook Motorola to become Number 1 in the world it did so working with the Network Operators and up until the arrival of Elop maintained strong links. The business was not in bad shape until it started listening to those say they need to get like Apple and so they put all their eggs in the Microsoft basket.
Until last week I was sure that Nokia would be the Business School case study in the decline and fall of mobile phone businesses but then we had BlackBerry! Just WOW when will the lawyers start filing claims against the Board for mismanagement? When will the regulators start asking questions about financial mismanagement? When will the stockholders realise that Fairfax are the undertakers rather than saviours for the business and the body has greater value to others and seek better offers? I don't think that we have heard the last on BlackBerry and would not be surprised to see Microsoft own the business once the dust has settled.
I think that we need a decent competitor to Google when it comes to Mobile OS and Apple is not it because it is focused just on the high end. I stronger better Microsoft that uses features from BES/BIS and can manufacture low cost devices that are sold via partners is just the kind of business that would scare the Californian Tech set and in doing so might force them to innovate and develop for a world based on 4G connectivity rather than the patch work networks we see today.
On the Apple front I was pleased to see just like others in the fashion industry they have given up trying to make size zero yet slimmer. I just hope that they and others will take note of the reviews of the two new iPhones side by side that report the 5c feels better in the hand and start adding curves. But please don't go over the top with a Kim Kardashian inspired monster, if that were to happen it would be on a par with the Pink Motorola V3 razr and signal that innovation had died and marketing was going to kill the business. On a negative front the changes seen with iO7 seem to be cosmetic rather than a genuine shift that takes into account that a 4G handset is a very different device to one that spends most of its time on Wifi. Perhaps next year the designers will rock up with a new OS that moves the world forward rather than paint lipstick on a fading star?
Samsung is a company that always surprises me when ever I interface with it. It's old school centralised command and control structure and long term planning seems inflexible yet surprises in getting the market right. Unlike any of the other Handset Guys it still seems to value it's channel partners and has strong relationships with the mobile networks who after all will sell the majority of its handsets. Yet design by committee does seem to be throwing up some strange selections. The Mobile Phone business has spent twenty years telling people that don't need to wear a device on the wrist to tell the time and yet they come out and launch such a device. Looking at the functionality I would have hoped that they would have followed Polar and combined fitness applications alongside the ability to be a second screen for a tablet/phone.
What can I say about Nokia without sounding like Tomi Ahonen? I would point out that when Nokia overtook Motorola to become Number 1 in the world it did so working with the Network Operators and up until the arrival of Elop maintained strong links. The business was not in bad shape until it started listening to those say they need to get like Apple and so they put all their eggs in the Microsoft basket.
Until last week I was sure that Nokia would be the Business School case study in the decline and fall of mobile phone businesses but then we had BlackBerry! Just WOW when will the lawyers start filing claims against the Board for mismanagement? When will the regulators start asking questions about financial mismanagement? When will the stockholders realise that Fairfax are the undertakers rather than saviours for the business and the body has greater value to others and seek better offers? I don't think that we have heard the last on BlackBerry and would not be surprised to see Microsoft own the business once the dust has settled.
I think that we need a decent competitor to Google when it comes to Mobile OS and Apple is not it because it is focused just on the high end. I stronger better Microsoft that uses features from BES/BIS and can manufacture low cost devices that are sold via partners is just the kind of business that would scare the Californian Tech set and in doing so might force them to innovate and develop for a world based on 4G connectivity rather than the patch work networks we see today.
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