It wasn't long ago when we were wondering when someone would come along with the sub-$200 smartphone. Now low-cost tablets are dripping onto the market. And usually when it rains, it pours.
Today ASUS introduced a low-cost tablet called the "MeMO Pad." It has a seven-inch, 1024 x 600 resolution screen and runs Android 4.1 on top of a 1GHz single core processor, and comes with 16GB worth of on-board storage. The hardware isn't the amazing part, it's the price: at $150 this is almost at the impulse-buying level. We've been seeing a number of decent tablets now at the $150 range.
Let's see if Amazon brings the price of its 7" Kindle tablet down a bit now.
Next, get ready for the sub-$100 tablet you can buy at the supermarket checkout. For any new competitors entering the tablet market, please keep devices like the MeMo in mind, and make sure you add a dash of WOW rather than introducing a MeToo.
Here is some more WOW potential for the handset vendor who gets this right.
Can you have your QWERTY and eat it too? Here is what Tactus Technology has been talking about for several years now. Production begins late 2013, early 2014 according to the interview below.
Black rectangular screen, black rectangular screen, black rectangular screen, black rectangular screen, black rectangular screen, cool foldable big-screen device you can spread out, black rectangular screen, black rectangular screen, black rectangular screen, bla... whao, what was that?
Was that something different in the world's most boring market filled with look-alike products? Could it be? Could things be about to change?
I would have more hope and be less cynical had I not seen similar presentations year after year. But these things do take time. Here's some hope from the display component guys at Samsung. Device makers looking for some WOW, higher margins, and lines out the door: get on your marks, get set, bend.
Fold it away boys:
(WARNING: the second video below is one of those visionary beautiful-people types.)
CES is always a great show; too bad for 2013, I couldn't go. But I've attended the show several times during the past few years, and I've learned that there are always similar themes and trends year after year. So, below I created a quick CES 2013 summary combining some guess work with my past trade show experience and some headlines I've scanned during the past few days. I hope this is fairly accurate, somewhat useful, and to the point.
Yup, CES Las Vegas: I've been there, done that, and I've had my fill, so I know the drill: There's loud crowds and loud music. There's personnel gawking and keynote talking. You had booth babes, you had to bring your shades. You give and you take, you take the giveaways. There is slight of hand, smoke and mirrors, under-the-table deals, and a few free meals.
There was probably NFC, RFID, BCI, and CGI. There was GPS, LED, and AT&T. There was quad core, dual core, dual band, dual screen, dual SIM, 3M, 3D, and 4G. You had multi-core, multi-threading, multi fashinoned, and multi-dimensional.
There was Intel inside, and there were big balloons outside. There was low-cost, Hi-Fi, high-tech, nanotech, restaurant checks, indoor maps, and power naps. There were flexible displays and firm handshakes. There were taxi receipts and company suites.
There was roulette, blackjack, slot machines, virtual machines, and coffee machines. There were iPhone cases & lots of aces. There was oxygen, helium, sodium, carbon, and probably some lithium. There were netbooks, networks, networking, tablets, phablets, kidlets, and booklets.
Devices were water proofed, moisture resistant, splash guarded, hard boiled, drop tested, and thief protected. There were tough phones, tough screens, tough tablets, tough love, and touch computing. There was Bluetooth, BlueAnt, Blu-ray.
There were connected cars, open bars, and probably some Swedish guy named Lars.
There were Snapdragons, snap decisions, and snap-to-it's.
There was a Z phone from Sony, an S phone from ZTE.
There were over-priced french fries and over-utilized WiFi. You had cloud computing, hotel commuting. There were smart homes, smartphones, smart watches, smart people, smart glasses, smart TV and of course, thieves like me. ROLL THE TAPE:
This great George Carlin piece doubles as a great CES summary:
This might not be directly mobile related, but thinking someday we might be holding a "smell-e-phones" in our hands or watching smell-e-vision, it might be time for your company to start working on the official company odor.
For brand building, here's something pretty sweet: an official brand fragrance. Nissan will be introducing their official scent at an upcoming auto show, and the same scent will be used consistently across showrooms and all marketing venues.
So, does your company have its official brand scent yet? You might want to get to work before all the good smells are taken.
Another one for the senses. NTT's Frangrance Phone from 2008:
Nissan executive discusses appleaing to the senses.
Here is another good example of using big data for the power of good. The Bandu from a Bostn-based startup called Neumitra is a watch which has sensors which are able to collect info from the body about stress levels. The data is then uploaded to the cloud where it is stored and analyzed on an on-going basis. The service provides feedback on relaxation and also has a location-based element as it layers stress on the map.
So please take five and watch the Bandu video to get a better understanding.
Here's another nice research project from Microsoft, the IllumiRoom Project creates an Immersive Gaming Experience. Not much detail is given which usually means smoke and mirrors. But it looks like a great idea:
Here's a touch of wow in a rather boring marketplace: a cool working brain-computer interface for a smartphone which enabled the user to just think about rejecting a call. It will be interesting to see how far BCI will go in the coming years.
Thought-controlled hangups. Skip to 1m:45s if in a hurry:
Here is another signal in support of eye-put and BCI. To be honest, this has been shown before. But this acts as a good reminder for device makers to be on top of new UI shifts.
At Haier's CES 2013 booth, their "TV of the future" shows the possibilities of eye movements and thought for input.
Video from 2011 showing BCI on a Haier television set:
Tablets as kids toys for $150? Yup. Let's call them kidlets. Tablet commoditization is reaching new heights.
Here is a child's tablet from Polaroid Corporation (which really has nothing to do with the long-bankrupt instant camera company). This tablet runs Android 4, has a seven-inch screen, customized apps for kids including a Nook eReader app, and appears to be a pretty tough device.
The inclusion of an eReading app could lead to some interesting content-based business models.
This isn't the first kids tablet. In fact, Toys R Us has been selling kids tablet computers for several seasons now. So, is this a sign that the tablet market is one to get into? Or perhaps one to get out of?
I have a vision that someday we will all live in a world in which visionary videos like the one below aren't quite so goofy. But until that day comes, here's one for the senses:
From what I can see, there's not too much exciting coming out of CES 2013, yet. For the most part, what's happening in Vegas can stay there for now.
Indeed, one of the more interesting products to be announced is an iPhone case, the Canopy Sensus. Sensus enables the back of smartphones to be used for touch input. It's an interesting approach. But not a new idea.
Back in 2007 Mitsubishi together with Microsoft introduced the "LucidTouch" input system. LucidTouch (please see the second video below) was an interesting approach to making touch a more natural user interface. Why block valuable screen real estate with multiple fingers when the back of devices go completely unused? And since then, other companies patented similar back of device uses. None have come to market.
It's interesting to note that Mitsubishi made one of the first true multi-touch products, the DiamondTouch, which was being shown years before the iPhone.
Companies such as Mitsubishi and Microsoft are great at showing off lab-based innovations. But it's time for some real-world excitement. Hopefully for them, ideas such as LucidTouch can help them with a comeback.
Canopy Sensus case for the iPhone, CES 2013:
LucidTouch from 2007 via Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL) & Microsoft.
So, Microsoft is complaining that Google isn't playing nice [STORY]. The question is, can Microsoft learn to play niche?
What a difference a decade makes for Microsoft.
I've come across some recent smartphone market share numbers for a few specific West European countries which, unfortunately for Microsoft, indicate almost 100% consumer apathy in Windows Phone-based devices. In fact, if these numbers are correct, Microsoft's smartphone platform market share is basically a statistical rounding error in these markets.
Who would have guessed the market would develop so? Back in the late '90s, many mobile industry executives considered Microsoft the handset industry's greatest threat. Microsoft looked like it was about to dilute the influence of so many mobile industry players when the smartphone market was still in its embryonic state.
And it wasn't just phones: for a while it looked as though Microsoft's influence was going to keep growing across all household devices. The company was pushing software for set-top boxes, televisions, PDAs, cars, and even coffee makers and watches.
At work and at play, it seemed as if we were to live in a Microsoft-dominated world.
I still maintain that Microsoft will emerge as the third wheel in the smartphone market — only because the company has no choice. If the stars are aligned in its favor, Microsoft could push itself to 10% in smartphone and tablets at some point in the coming two years.
But 10% is a long way from 90%, which is a figure I assume Microsoft employees are more accustomed to. Moving from a dominant to subordinate market position isn't a fun ride. Can Microsoft learn to be a niche player in somebody else's market? How does a company of 90,000 employees adjust its strategy to become the third string player (and that's if things work out for them)?
Certainly it wasn't Microsoft's wish to be niche, but with luck, MS can replenish before they vanish.
Here we see another example of "eye-put." Is the eye phone trend for real?
Eye-tracking techniques could certainly solve several real-world usability flaws on PC and smartphone platforms and lead to advanced natural-user interfaces. In mobile devices, one of the more annoying real-world UI issues is that of screens jumping into dark battery-saver mode while you're actively reading an article.
Some device vendors are trying to address the issue. Samsung's "SmartStay" feature in the Galaxy S2, for example, uses the phone's front-facing camera to detect when the user's eyes are looking at or away from the display and adjusts the screen's lighting status accordingly. SmartStay is a nice thought, but it's not the thought that counts, it's the execution. User reviews of SmartStay have been mixed. Being pretty good usually isn't a strategic goal.
Tobii, a Swedish company which develops eye-tracking solutions, has introduced an eye-tracking accessory called "Rex" for Windows 8 machines. In essence, it enables the eyeball's gaze to act as a computer mouse.
There's some interesting potential uses for eye-tracking. Market researchers, for example, realize that gazes can be worth a thousand words. The use of eye-tracking input could cut across phones, computers, televisions, cars.
It could be time for platform vendors to be more forward looking and support looking forward.
