Creative Connectivity

Smart Wearables – a $30 billion dollar opportunity

Over the past year I’ve been following the hype around smart wearable technology. Fuelled by the enthusiasm of the big players to embrace this market, analysts are falling over themselves to define and inflate the size of the wearable market opportunity, predicting a market worth over $30 billion by 2020. That belief is driven by a desperate need for major companies to find something to follow on from laptops, tablets and PCs, all of which are being commoditised. In his seminal book on technical disruption “The Innovator’s Dilemma”, Clayton Christiansen warns that “no one can learn from market research what the early market will be. I can hire consultants, but the only thing I can know for sure is that their findings will be wrong”. As I look at the current predictions, that warning feels worryingly appropriate.

The problem is that most of the models being used to estimate the consumer appetite for wearable technology are built around technology push, with manufacturers trying to shape their technology to fit what they believe consumers will buy. It’s a strategy that is likely to fail, as wearable technology is more personal than any product they’ve ever made before. To try and see whether there is a market, I’ve put together a report that looks at the market opportunity from the contrary viewpoint, building it up from known consumer behaviour and preferences. Whilst there’s no guarantee that doesn’t fall into the same Christiansen trap, it suggests the market could still reach $30 billion in 2020, but with a very different mix of products being made by some very different companies. You can download the report here.

A Happy New Hear

Last year I coined a new term – “Hearables“, for things you put in your ear. Much of what’s happening in that space is being driven by developments in hearing aids. Hearing aids have made immense technical progress since the first electronic ones were introduced to the market over fifty years ago. Few people remember those early ones – they involved large battery packs and amplifiers which people strapped underneath their clothing. But the benefits of better hearing were so great that people were prepared to do that. Today hearing aids are so small that you hardly notice them, whether you’re the wearer or an observer. The technology within them has also made incredible strides. They may contain multiple microphones, which, along with clever digital signal processing lets you focus on sound coming from in front of you, behaving much like your ear. They can also adjust the way they amplify sound to cope with different locations, from noisy streets to the office, restaurants and the home. The amount of technology which has been squeezed into such a small space is incredible, surpassing other high tech products like tablets and phones for the sheer density of electronics.

The best Mobile Health Application of 2014

Every year I get to sit through a large number of presentations from people who have developed new products or applications. Whilst lots of them are interesting, it‘s rare to see one that jumps out. This year I was fortunate to sit through one of those. It was given by Andrew Bastawrous from the London School of Tropical Medicine, describing a smartphone adaptor and application he and his colleagues had designed to help diagnose sight problems. It was a master class in how to make decisions about hardware and application development.

Andrew has now set up Peekvision – a company planning to make and distribute their product. They’ve started an IndieGoGo campaign to fund it, which will let them supply them to community workers around the world who have been selected by their partners Médecins sans Frontières and the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness. For £60 you can pay for a device to be given to a healthcare worker. I can’t think of a better Christmas present to give.

What was so good about Andrew’s talk was the pragmatic approach to product design. It started by identifying a real problem that needed to be solved and then addressing the challenges of rolling it out in a way that made sense to patients, the local community and health workers. So many developers would have just reached for their iPhone and started to write code. This brilliantly demonstrates why that would have been the wrong approach.

UK Smart Meters Delayed. Again.

Last week the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change announced that the UK’s smart metering deployment was facing another 12 months delay. That’s 18 months after they announced that the UK’s smart metering deployment was facing another 12 months’ delay. This is not all bad news. It means that the growing population of consultants within DECC can look forward to what is fast becoming a never-ending gravy train of consultancy work, public consultations and project reviews. For the consumer it’s likely to mean even more unnecessary costs heaped onto future energy bills. But not until after the next election, so nobody in Westminster really cares.

Despite the charade of one step forward, one step backwards, we still don’t know whether the deployment will have any practical value. There is no EU mandate for it – individual countries need to show that smart metering is cost effective. The first DECC survey showed it was not, but DECC mandarins then fudged the numbers (not my phrase, but that of an involved MP), since when they’ve spent a considerable amount of time and effort in concealing what’s behind their calculations. The approach of “DECC knows best” has resulted in the most complex and expensive smart metering scheme in the world, which appears to be beyond the ability of both suppliers and utilities to deliver.

What is 5G? And do we need it?

The mobile industry loves hype. Now that 4G phones have reached the market, suppliers are keen to promote the next dollop of “jam tomorrow” by offering the world 5G – something that’s still rather nebulous, but as always in this industry, allegedly better than what we have today. Most users have still to experience 4G, but that’s par for the course. The industry loves something new, preferably with a bigger number. It begs the question of whether we need it, and even what it is? To try and answer these questions it’s instructive to look back at the history of mobile to see just what the “G”s mean.

How Apple has changed the Smart Watch market

A few months ago I wrote a report about the wearables market. At the time I was sceptical about the future of the smart watch. That was before the Apple Watch announcement. I didn’t think I’d find it very interesting. Now I’ve seen it, I’ve changed my mind – I think they’ve redefined the market by turning the concept of the smart watch on its head.

The prospect of Apple owning the wrist galvanised many other manufacturers into pre-empting them, of which the most notable contenders were Pebble, Motorola, Asus and Samsung. All want to seize the wrist, in what might be described as a case of carpus diem. Many in the industry want to believe in these products, predicting massive sales volumes and revenue. Few have bothered to ask customers what they want. Two who did were Kantor and Apple Insider. Kantor’s panel suggested up to 60% of iPhone owners would buy one, Apple Insider found “as many as 4%” of iPhone users would be early adopters, translating that finding into an estimate of sales between 5 and 10 million units in the first twelve months”. So what’s the truth?

When the Apple Watch announcement came, it only generated a muted whimper of excitement. It wasn’t what most commentators had expected. That was hardly surprising given the level of hysteria which had been whipped up prior to its unveiling. Whilst a lot of subsequent reviews have complained about its lack of functionality I found that I warmed to it, or at least its potential. It’s not just clever packaging of technology, which is what exemplifies the Asus, Motorola and Samsung watches – it’s a redefinition of the purpose of the wrist. I think it may be more of a game-changer than has been reported, but not necessarily in a positive way for the rest of the smart watch industry.