SHANGHAI -- CTA CEO Gary Shapiro praised China’s Belt and Road trade initiative as he kicked off CES Asia Wednesday before the opening keynote address by Wan Biao, Huawei chief operating officer-consumer BG. “China has adopted a strategy that makes a lot of sense,” Shapiro said, citing Chinese President Xi Jinping’s vision to connect Asia with Europe and Africa along ancient trade routes, and beyond, through a trade and infrastructure network.
Apple bowed its voice-controlled HomePod speaker. HomePod arrives in December at $349, the company announced Monday. Amazon's Alexa Echo is $179, Google Home, $129. The HomePod works with an Apple Music subscription. As a digital assistant, HomePod can send messages, get updates on news, sports and weather and control smart home devices when users speak the “Hey, Siri” trigger phrase.
Amazon Echo owners will have more productive conversations with Alexa after integration with a Nuance virtual assistant for the enterprise market. It’s the first such example of virtual assistants working together, Nuance said. It paves the way for Echo owners to manage accounts with banks and insurance companies by voice, said Robert Weideman, general manager of Nuance’s enterprise division, in an interview. He said a voiceprint is a more secure biometric than fingerprints that can be copied or passwords that can be stolen. His company measures more than 125 elements to differentiate a voice to authenticate the user. As messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger and Twitter Direct Messages become more popular, consumers will be able to “friend” providers, Weideman said. Google Home also presents consumer voice opportunities, he said.
After shutting operations over a “cash flow issue,” high-end video software and hardware company Kaleidescape is looking to restore faith in the brand, CEO Cheena Srinivasan told us. Its “bold new mission” is to make Kaleidescape the “pre-eminent platform for that time when the studios are ready for premium VOD and day and date,” he said Thursday. Troubles date to STMicroelectronics shutting down its set-top box division in January 2016, along with production of chips for Kaleidescape's Ultra HD movie player. More recently, the company also restructured its relationships with the movie studios, including Sony and Warner Bros., the CEO said.
Autonomous driving will spur a goods and services economy worth $7 trillion by 2050, up from $800 billion in 2035, Intel/Strategy Analytics reported Thursday. The idle time when drivers become passengers will create new business opportunities, said Intel, and mobility-as-a-service will “disrupt long-held patterns" involving cars, said Intel. “Companies should start thinking about their autonomous strategy now,” said Intel CEO Brian Krzanich in a statement in which he compared opportunities from the “passenger economy” with digital business models ushered in by personal computing, the internet, ubiquitous connectivity and smartphones. Business-to-business will experience the first wave of change in the autonomous driving age, said SA researcher Harvey Cohen. Media companies and content producers are expected to develop custom content formats to match short and long travel times, and advertising will become more location-based and relevant, the study said.
BURLINGAME, Calif. -- Personalization and privacy are among issues affecting how voice control evolves as a primary smart home interface, industry officials said on a panel at Parks Associates’ Connections conference last week. Its research shows using voice to control connected devices is far down the list of consumer uses. Only 10 percent of consumers with voice-based Echo or Google Home speakers -- or an Apple Siri, Google Assistant or Microsoft Cortana app -- used voice to control smart home devices, said analyst Dina Abdelrazik. Apple, which declined to participate on the panel last week, is a “prime contender in the voice-first market” and one of the “big 4” in voice-based personal assistants, Abdelrazik emailed us.
After soaring 22 percent Thursday to $61.27 following a better-than-expected Q1 earnings report (see 1705250026), Best Buy shares closed 3.7 percent lower Friday at $58.98. The results come amid challenges, Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter wrote investors Friday. Wedbush expects growth to “stall in the back half” of Q2 on a “possibly delayed iPhone 8 launch” and aggressive holiday pricing “as Amazon protects itself from Walmart, with Best Buy caught in the crossfire.” On the Thursday earnings call, Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly said Q1 mobile sales topped expectations amid demand from new unlimited data plans. Joly cited customers moving into installment billing plans that extended smartphone replacement cycles. Chief Financial Officer Corie Barry said Best Buy is taking a “moderate” view on the next iPhone release. Helping the company's recovery from previously tougher financial times are partnerships, and it's expanding tech support and related options, executives said.
BURLINGAME, Calif. -- With smart home awareness low and stakes for recurring service revenue high, Comcast and Cox executives spoke of privacy and other challenges and hopes. Comcast's Xfinity Home IoT and data services and Cox's Home Life are among such products, representatives told a Parks Associates conference this week. They predicted more sophisticated products and other enhancements.
The smart home industry is stuck in a holding pattern between early adopters and the mass market, and optimistic industry watchers hope that voice control led by Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant tips the market to mainstream, a Parks Associates conference in Burlingame, California, was told Tuesday. Voice control could be a benign Trojan horse into consumers’ lives for the smart home industry, some hope. Comfort levels vary in how far consumers trust a digital assistant, said Parks CEO Tricia Parks and others. Mike Buckingham, director-business development at August Home, asked, “How do these products all come together?” Voice is exciting to all, said Martin Heckmann, director-emerging business at garage door control company Chamberlain: There aren’t enough “robust” voice control experiences today to provide a “full suite of use cases to consumers as it relates to security.” Honeywell Vice President-IoT Partner Programs Scott Harkins said voice is “key” to smart home success. Getting to conversational voice is “critical,” he said. Voice control also could be a stopgap to doing away with user interfaces, said Parks analyst Tom Kerber.
Smart home services company Vivint sees signs of industry acceleration, said Matt Eyring, chief strategy and innovation officer, during a keynote at a Parks Associates conference Wednesday in Burlingame, California. Vivint has been doing in-home and phone-based sales to explain to consumers what smart home can do for them, now also with a Best Buy partnership, he said. At this point in smart home awareness, which Parks pegs at 30 percent of broadband households, companies need consultative selling, Eyring said. He compared his company's partnership with Citizens Bank giving consumers options to pay for smart home features to the model of buying a smartphone: “The iPhone was a business model innovation as much as it was a product innovation, which was getting a supercomputer into your pocket for $100 a month, and not $1,500 upfront.”