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| From left: Dropcam’s Pro camera, Samsung’s Galaxy Gear watch and the Pebble smartwatch |
For
much of the developed world, 2013 marked the beginning of a new
technological era. More than half the people in North America, the UK,
Japan, South Korea and the Nordic countries now own a smartphone, market
researchers have concluded. By next year, the rest of western Europe
will join that mobile majority.
The rise of the smartphone has already created new
winners and losers in the consumer electronics market. According to a
November estimate by analysts at US investment bank Canaccord Genuity, Apple and Samsung captured a “remarkable” 109 per cent
of handset industry profits in the third quarter of 2013, a figure that
makes sense only if the losses suffered by suppliers such as BlackBerry, Nokia and Taiwan’s HTC are counted as “negative profits”.
But
it is not just their mobile rivals’ earnings that Apple’s iPhone and
Samsung’s Galaxy devices have gobbled up. Cameras, music and radio
players, alarm clocks, navigation systems, even torches and compasses
are now absorbed into a glowing screen.
Yet as smartphones increase in sophistication, they are also enabling
new categories of gadget that harness their always-on connection,
sensors and processing power.
Wearable technology, “smart home” devices such as lights and security
systems, fitness trackers and even toys are all orbiting the
smartphone, making connected devices one of 2013’s hottest gadget
trends.
As innovation in smartphones themselves starts to slow down, the
platform that they are enabling is just getting started – even if
analysts say mass-market adoption is still years away.
“The nice thing about the internet of things is it’s not monolithic,” says Rob Chandhok, president of Qualcomm’s
interactive platforms division, who predicts a “Cambrian explosion” of
smart devices. “I expect wearables to be on a very fast cadence as form
factors fall out.”
Pebble,
one of the best-known independent makers of smartwatches, which raised
$10m on US-based crowdfunding platform Kickstarter last year, said in
November that it had sold 190,000 watches in total – impressive for a start-up but hardly the sort of volume that would have Apple rushing its rumoured iWatch to market.
As with most smartwatches, the Pebble mainly acts as a way to notify
the wearer of incoming messages or other alerts from a
Bluetooth-tethered smartphone.
The September launch of Samsung’s Galaxy Gear marked
a significant moment for the smartwatch market. Although the device has
had mixed reviews, the endorsement of the form factor by the South
Korean electronics group – coupled with persistent rumours that Google, Microsoft
and others are all working on similar watches – signalled that smart
watches may not be a niche for much longer. Even Casio’s G-Shock now has
a Bluetooth connection to receive message notifications – and has the
benefit of actually looking like a watch.
At the same time as the Galaxy Gear was unveiled, Qualcomm launched
the Toq, a smartwatch that uses its Mirasol screen to showcase the
potential of the technology.
Unlike
the Gear, which needs charging every day and does not keep its watch
face lit all the time, the Toq’s screen is always on and the battery
lasts for several days.
“Being able to do things at a glance is very powerful,” says Mr
Chandhok. “I don’t want to replicate the smartphone, but I do want to
use it to raise things above the noise level. Notification really only
works when it’s at a glance.”
But Robert Brunner, partner at the design agency Ammunition Group,
which works on products such as Beats by Dr Dre headphones, says the
appearance of these devices is just as important as what they do.
“We
are in the fashion business,” Mr Brunner said at a recent GigaOm
conference in San Francisco. “The things that people carry and use
define us almost as much as the clothes we wear ... Wearable technology
needs to understand fashion.”
A similar challenge lies in the smart home market, where devices such
as the internet fridge are solutions searching for a problem.
“The magic that we all love of being connected and the things that it
does is going, going, gone,” Mr Brunner says. “At some point, having
running water in your house was amazing. It’s no longer just about this
magic, it’s about what it’s actually doing in our lives.”
Dozens of new devices have emerged in recent
months, from smart locks such as August and Lockitron, which open with a
wave of a smartphone, to Philips’ Hue lightbulbs, which can be set to match the colour of a photo from a mobile app, as well as other features.
Some are aimed at security-conscious folk:
Dropcam’s $200 Pro camera constantly monitors its owner’s home, alerting
them to movement after they’ve left the house and letting them watch a
live video feed. SmartThings sells kits that enable garage doors to be
locked remotely or sends notifications to a phone when the kids get home
from school. Large retailers such as Home Depot, Staples
and Lowe’s are devoting more and more floor space to such products,
even though it is unclear how large the market for them is today.
“It
takes time for people to embrace connectivity,” says Tony Fadell, chief
executive of Nest, whose “learning” thermostat and app-enabled smoke
alarm have attained an Apple-like cult following among early adopters of
the “connected home”.
“Most people are just jamming things together because that’s the
fastest thing to do. They don’t rethink the experience from top to
bottom ... Just because it can be connected doesn’t mean it should,” he
says.
Ben Wood, analyst at tech consultancy CCS Insight, sees great
potential in smartwatches, but says the connected home is “just too hard
for the man on the street right now”. The plethora of single-purpose
“point solutions” is still a long way from the joined-up vision touted
at trade shows, he says.
Amanda Peyton, co-founder of Grand St, a marketplace for creative
technology, admits that the “independent, creative, alternative
electronics” market is worth just a fraction of the $1tn consumer
electronics market today.
“But it is absolutely the fastest growing of any sector,” she says.
“Over the next few years, you will see this section of the market just
growing enormously. It’s going to cut into some of the existing consumer
electronics market, but it’s going to grow the whole thing overall.”
Wearables and other “smart” devices might not overtake the smartphone
market any time soon – but they promise to be a much livelier arena for
innovation in the coming years.
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