CES 2019 Who'll Pay For The Wall? And Y-brush?

At last, The Wall is up, but a bit too far from the border with Mexico: Samsung is exhibiting in Vegas the most titanic version of its monster, a whopping 219-inch, 4K microLED TV. At that level, you should measure your screens in feet (18), or yards (6), or simply dump these obsolete standards altogether (5.5 m). This wall will cost you much less than $5.6bn, and will much more easily fit your living room once it's curved. Like LG's rollable screen, which returned to CES but this time for sale, under the group's premium brand for home appliances, as LG Signature OLED TV R.

In the weird vehicles section, BMW proposes a driverless motorbike, Hyundai a walking car (Elevate), and Bell a flying car (Nexus Air Taxi) so huge, that it takes as much space as 4 cars, and probably burns more fuel than 10 - prepare to be Uber-charged for a ride on that one.

Otherwise, IBM is back to mainframe computers: it takes a 2.7 m x 2.7 m frame to host its IBM Q System One quantum computer. It only takes two of these to climb The Wall, if not to reduce it to quantum bits.

Meanwhile, the French decided not to punch below the belt, like last year (see "CES 2019 - Driverlessly nuts"), but straight at the jaw: Lyon-based FasTeesh claims its Y-brush can clean your teeth in 10 seconds.

You just have to keep a low profile for two times 5 seconds, as you chew on the thing:.

That said, this concept is also smartly proposed in a BtoB version targeting medical or retirement institutions. That's a real game changer for caretakers.

What else? Ah, yes, after all, there seem to be still some latency with 5G.

mot-bile 2019

South Cow-rea already cow-nected to 5G

Lazy MNOs usually settle for milking the cow, but SK Telecom is neither lazy, not your usual MNO. And in its latest presentation, the Korean leader suggested to IoT-ize the cow in order to generate new applications and revenues:

LiveCare: "oral implant of bio capsule in cow, extract real-time information through LoRa, provide analysis through Web/app, alert and message to farmer" - that was Korea's version of the classic 'you have two cows' parable.

Of course, LiveCare was only a niche app illustrating the way the MNO intends to leverage its core techno and infra (network, A.I., cloud, data) to boost new business (e.g. IoT, commerce, media).  

A couple of days ago, BT CEO Gavin Patterson called all players to 'build a strong business case for 5G', and measuring bovine farts doesn't exactly sound like the next killer app... unless you replace cows with humans, and alerts with A.I.-picked medical or culinary recommandations customized for your microbiome (expect more A.I. news from SKT, already present with NUGU or Aibril - the latter with IBM Watson -, and recently joined by Hyundai Motor Company, Hanwha Asset Management, and the Canadian Element AI in a USD 45M fund to invest in A.I. and smart mobility).


SK Telecom is already 'building a strong case for 5G', particularly with its rival KT about to showcase its own flavor during the Pyeongchang 2018 olympics. And SKT are not just into testing earlier than others (e.g. recently 4G LTE-5G internetworking, or VR 360 over 5G with Samsung tablet-size device), or even into going commercial earlier than others, but also into building a stronger 5G standard (e.g. recently pushed for 200 Gbps packet swiching), and a stronger technological environment around 5G (e.g. recently 4.8 Gbps WiFi with 802.11ax in Bundang, or 5G-PON / Passive Optical Network distribution).


'Building a strong business case for 5G' will be more fun for marketers. Even if it starts, as usual, like with 3G or 4G, with existing services that will saturate the previous generation anyway, like HD video these days, a booming category if we ever saw one. 

'Building a strong business case for 5G' will also demand a touch of emotion, so I'll finish this focus on SK with their latest ad for 5G. It features an endangered species, Jeju-do's haenyeo (female diver):




mot-bile 2017