New words: The "Application-specific IOT" and "Industry-specific IOT"

As I try to learn more about IOT for my own edumacation, I sometimes stumble upon online articles that impart critical knowledge that I cant help but share. This, below, is one of them.

I am linking to an interesting article about the difference between The "Application-specific IOT"  e.g. wearables, the type of IOT that the majority of Americans know and are excited about and "Industry-specific IOT", which is something else that companies within the same industry will pursue.

Quoting the article:

How will IoT fans, pundits and especially company CEOs betting their company business on IoT explain the disparity between the vision and the reality? We are already witnessing the introduction of new “classes” of IoT such as the “industrial IoT”. I expect that we will witness the emergence of “application-specific IoT” and “industry-specific IoT”, which, in so many ways, will not be that different from the many M2M technology implementations that address narrowly defined yet no less valuable business opportunities such as the solutions implemented, for example, by Axeda at Diebold, EMC, GE Healthcare, and Philips Healthcare.

To read more about the Wisdom of Devices and the evolution of the IoT go to Joe Barkai's discussion on General IoT vs. Application-Specific IoT

A city saved $95m a year in utilities cost through use of IOT

According to this article "The Internet of Everything", aka Internet of Things, IOT, is the next biggest awesomest thing that will save the world because even though it is only in its infancy and is barely better than a bunch of interconnected sensors it generated a city $37 million in light and $58 million savings in water expenses.

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To learn more about this city and read more about how IOT will save the world, read John Chamber's LinkedIn Blog

How is IOT going to grow?

How is IOT going to grow? at first I thought that it would grow just like the internet did and monetize just like ecommerce did. It's perfect for my own simplified understanding of the synergies among science, engineering and business.

However, there is an alternative view. Its not going to grow the same way because there is no standards body to guide its development.

Equally surprising is the quick quip that IOT is not about the thing or the enterprise, its about content. This line of thought still needs to be developed but its intriguing to me.



Quoting the article of Joe Barkai

We often think of the evolution of the World Wide Web as a model that the IoT will follow. In fact, there is an assumption that with the proliferation of instrumented devices and pervasive commutation, the adoption rate of the IoT will be much faster than that of the Internet. However, the WWW model fostered a culture of collaboration and open standards such as hypertext, HTML and common page browsers; the W3C consortium develops and maintains standards and connects developers and users.

The IOT industry does not seem to converge in this direction; almost the opposite. The space is inundated by numerous of communication standards and data protocols that aren’t interoperable, and companies offering as many one-off solutions to attempt to connect devices using incompatible communications methods and interfaces.

The business potential is not in the conduit, or the “plumbing” of the IoT; it is in the content. (bold emphasis mine)

iWatch vs Swatch Touch. Which is more fashionable?

Image from Business Insider

From Toms Hardware

When Swatch announced that it will launch a smart watch this fall in order to grab a slice of the $30B market (by 2018), I thought, wow that would be the elegant smart watch. Apple's will be relegated to the techy "casio calculator" bin of history. After all Swatch is the biggest watchmaker.  And it does not just sell Swatch, it also owns Tissot, Longines, Omega and Breguet.

I have to admit, I was wrong. The iWatch launched not just with a technological bang but with a fashionable flair as well. Just look and compare the two images above - Apple is not ceding any territory when it comes to looking good. I should have expected that considering how Apple revolutionized smart phones using not just new tech but also sold them as a fashion accessory.

All I can say is, Hayek better be ready to rumble in the ruway.

Why is Apple launching iPhone 6 phablet and iWatch at the same time?

iPhone 6 is a Phablet a.k.a "5.5 inches or bigger"

It seems that they did so in order for Apple to grab a larger market share of the fast growing phablet aka "big screen phone" market, currently being ruled by Samsung and the fastest growing segment of the global smartphone market. Phablets are forecasted to be ~50% the size of the smartphone market by 2018.

I wont belabor the oblique sexy geekish reference to a phablet being 5.5 inches or bigger, since sex wearables are a different category altogether, but it seems that Apple may have responded to the market by making the iPhone 6 bigger, longer, larger, heavier, bulkier and wider! This is a gamble, and many people will not be happy, but the market is changing and Apple has to change with the times. People now use smart phones mainly to do things other than make phone calls! The top 4 uses of smart phones are internet browsing, IM/chatting on social media, playing music and playing games!

Calling is so 20th Century! Except of course when it is not.

iWatch to the rescue!

The smartwatch done right is the ultimate phablet companion because of its raison d’etre. It's not a phone replacement nor is it expected to do something completely new (for now). It is however expected to do simple tasks faster, and hence, save people time by enabling quick text reads/responses, checking notifications/reminders/calender events without having to pull the phone from the pocket/car plug/iHome, coding in the password, etc. In addition, it will probably have whatever current wrist-worn wearables already have like health tracking (fitbit) and likely bluetooth connection for cars/controls. I won't be surprised if the iWatche and their future Android counterparts will have miniature cameras in the too.

This pairing strategy is already being done by Samsung (the global phablet leader) with its G Watch. I have no doubt that this is what Apple will do as well.

Is this a smart move? Someone like me who likes my small iPhone4 but want to upgrade, now has to buy both the iPhone 6 and the iWatch to get improved experience without the downside. I think people will buy both, but that is just my guess, since I have not seen either the iPhone 6 or the iWatch.

From Forbes

What exactly is IOT - Internet of Things?

It's hard to define something that is new and is changing very fast but this article from BizCatalyst360 by one of my LinkedIn contacts, Chuck Brooks, makes for a good primer on what this new industry is all about. I find its description of IOT captures both the essence and the potential of this nascent tech sector. The article is titled, IoT – The New Frontier of Technology Convergence, which inspired the name of this blog.

"the Internet of Things (IoT) is the concept of connecting any device to the internet, from home appliances to wearable technology such as watches, to cars. These days, if a device can be turned on, it most likely can be connected to the internet. Because of the IoT, objects to objects, people to people and objects to people can communicate quickly and efficiently."

The potential of IOT is huge 
Its not just about fitbits and losing a few pounds anymore. Its bigger than that.

All of a sudden, it feels like the 90s and in the early days of ecommerce again, when B2B, B2C, B2Etc are all just potential ways of connecting one entity to another. Mayhaps the terms O2O (objects to objects), P2P (people to people), and O2P (objects to people) would become mainstream as well?

The rest of the article deals with IOT's potential in the public sector, such as smart parking, HOV lanes, sensors on public transportation, real-time auto-notification of delays and all that good stuff, which I think further underlies the potential of this sector - the government WILL support its growth. It will support it just because it has the potential to make public services better for everyone.

According to Gartner, via Chuck's article, the market is huge: 26 billion networked IOT devices by 2020. Think about it. That is like when Steve Jobs unveiled iPhone. If this comes true, our lives will change. Ergo, businesses will change too - tons of real-time data will make social networking, cloud computing, big data and fiber networks even more important than they are now.