Matter Yoga at CES 2023

Over the past few years, we've seen screens that could be foldable, rollable, stretchable, pivotable, slidable, wearable, or even laughable. By CES 2024, I bet screens will be chewable and inflatable until that bubble pops*.

It's not just us who exercise with the help of our new gizmos, like our smart watches or this laptop-powering exercise bike (Acer's eKinekt BD3)...

... Our gizmos themselves are doing some serious stretching now, from the basic figures of Lenovo's aptly named Yoga Book 9i to the epic contorsions of the foldable and slidable Samsung Flex Hybrid (in one or two directions - Flex Slidable Solo or Flex Slidable Duet):

No wonder our screens look slender and fitter - not even a bikini string attached for the elegant, 97-inch LG Signature OLED M3 (still needs to be plugged to the electricity grid, but Zero Connect otherwise... goodbye meshrooms!):

Of course, as our mobile and home hubs get smarter, new devices keep popping up to feed them and our screens with even more vital data. CES 2023 even proposed to health monitoring nerds a weird game of thrones between Aetrex Albert 3DFit (get your health scanned by stepping into some kind of toilet bowl) and Whithings U-Scan (get your urine scanned as it flows)**:

How to keep this ever expanding and ever more complex ecosystem as simple and sustainable as possible? Even the most pervasive manufacturers gave up their dreams of growing their own proprietary Internet of Things a long time ago, and to cover all bases, they all need a minimum of stability and interoperability. 

 

For that (not necessarily fecal) matter, the industry's new standard changed its name from a very 1990s 'Connected Home over IP' to a more Millenials-friendly 'Matter' behind which all the big guys join forces, starting with Apple (HomeKit), Google (Weave), and Samsung (SmartThings). Since no significant anti-Matter emerged at CES,if an explosion shall occur, it should be a positive one (except of course regarding our most intimate data).

mot-bile 2023

* I guess 'screenable' now means 'that can be turned into a screen' 

to get their health checked (TTcare by AI FOR PET)

Tomorrow won't be about Samsung v. Apple any more than the present is about Microsoft v. Nokia

Over the past weeks, Samsung buried the hatchet with Ericsson, before signing cross-license agreements with Google, and then Cisco, days after a similar deal between the last two (note that Google sold Motorola to Lenovo in almost the same breath, but this is not about hardware - Big G keeps the bulk of the patent portfolio).

Samsung and Google concluded in their press release ("Samsung and Google Sign Global Patent License Agreement" - 20140127) that "there is more to gain from cooperating than engaging in unnecessary patent disputes". A clear memo to Apple, and food for thought - and juries - ahead of the next bouts in court between Suwon and Cupertino.

"Samsung and Google are showing the rest of the industry that there is more to gain from cooperating than engaging in unnecessary patent disputes". Follow my eyes...

Again*, I'm not taking sides here. It's just that I'm interested in innovation dynamics, and that I don't like to see lawyers or finance people set the agenda in that field. Such partnerships don't put them out of the equation, but allow innovators to keep their eyes on the ball.

And key players to prepare for what comes next. 5G standardization, for instance, or the still open internet of things, domains where Google and Samsung don't want to become the Microsoft and Nokia of yesterday, leaders who were supposedly the best positioned for convergence and pervasive internet...

Samsung outqualcommed the Americans for 4G but now, the Korean needs to build a common platform with them and what's left of Europe before China Inc or other players try to claim their own time slot.

Tomorrow won't be about Samsung v. Apple any more than the present is about Microsoft v. Nokia

mot-bile 2014

* see "Apple - the end of the affair" or "Omnipatent v. Impatent"

I see through you: City of Sin, Screens, and Smartpagers

Remember that old 3D classic "Avatar"? Now Navis can say "I see through you" instead of "I see you" on Hisense's latest see-through 3D TV.

CES 2013 is all about screens, and it starts on your wrist. I wonder if Amazon will try to sell haikus on this mini ebook reader:

Pebble's e-paper watch for iPhone and Android does look like a gizmo from the 90s, some sort of Bluetooth-enabled smartpager, but the biggest story about it is the way it was crowdfunded on Kickstarter, smashing the $100k goal and raising $10M within days. 85,000 units have been ordered before the CES, more to come.

Does your handset require a remote control that works on Bluetooth? That's another story:


Moving on to some bigger screens: how do you like your OLED TV? 4K (Panasonic)? 4K and Ultra HD (Sony)? Curved (Samsung - nothing as sexy as its "Samsung Flexible AMOLED" of course -, LG)? Multi-view (Samsung again)?

Sharing your screen, that's also possible on the Lenovo IdeaCentre Table PC, a touch table that may host interesting game applications in a near future.

Nevermind the fingerprints, the dust, or even water. One year after HzO Waterblock, Huawei demonstrated a waterproof Ascend series (Ascend Mate, Ascend D2). I'm still in shock to see a smartphone, with all its connectivity slots open, take a dive and come out just fine.

And how about this schizophrenic Asus Transformer AiO? An Android tablet taking off from your Windows 8 desktop? Will an iPad spin off from it? An Apple, wrapped in a Google, inside an Microsoft?

I still don't know what to make of the Firefox OS (showcased in Vegas). A Plan B for Android makes sense (I'm not even mentioning iOS), and it's nice to start in Brazil, but can the Mozilla ecosystem grow that big?

SmartTVs, smartphones, smartwatches... it all sounds like logistics these days, more about fine tuning delivering processes than about delivering new goods.

Still better than last year's shark lawyer frenzies.

mot-bile 2013

Voice Discounted, data embedded, TV Finnished

18 eurocents per mn, Alles Klar. klarmobil.de is mobilcom's latest vehicle to claim more customers and lower even more their revenues. Because subscriptions are up (4.55M end of June) but overall turnover down (-8% vs Q2 2004). So the operator communicates on a growing EBITDA per customer... New owners Texas Pacific Group obviously wanted to add sexier assets to their kolossales spectrum... up for sale but when and to whom ?

At last, 3G starts being embedded in laptops : Dell are working with Cingular on UMTS and should add HSDPA Q1 2006, and in the cdma2000 family, with Verizon on EV-DO (along with HP & IBM-Lenovo). W-CDMA and EV-DO proved their reliability and MNOs shouldn't miss the window of opportunity before the WiMAX - WiBro wave.

Nokia waited for the 2bn mobile sub mark to announce handset #1,000,000,000, so that stupid analysts can praise their 50% market share. Less stupid : the choice of Taiwan for a new R&D center devoted to 3G. The Mobile Services Development Center (MSDC) is a JV with the Institute for Information Industry and the perfect bridge with mainland China. This side of the Thames, Nok-Nok are about to start their Oxford DVB-H trial with Ariqva (see Row vs wideband), but 02 customers won't pay for the TV service... the aim of the game remains to duplicate an easy experiment everywhere across Europe and lobby regulators, not to validate the potential of a commercial service. And working with Microsoft definitely changed the way Nokia annouce future products : I cultivate the buzz far in advance (i.e. 4Gb Nokia N91 will combine W-CDMA and WiFi and laminate iPods) and I postpone the launch because of Redmond's embedded bug-and-glitches function.