Catching up with The Internet Of Things
I've been on vacation for a week-plus, parenting from a full-time-plus job while my kids are on summer vacation as well as dealing with a computer crash, so I've been a bit remiss in posting, but I'll try to clear out at least some of my backlog tonight. Hard to believe more than three weeks have passed.
I should start by noting a couple paradigms that were much-discussed last decade but which have become too commonplace for frequent discussion in the last five years, though both are still either highly relevant or else fully realized and being replaced by one of the next paradigms.
The Halo Effect. This was formerly a phenomenon Apple effectively used to increase sales of its Macintosh computers back before the iPhone, when the iPod was still all the rage. The idea was that all these new iPod users might be more interested in buying more Apple products. The concept is, of course, much (*MUCH*) older, but as is true of most good ideas, they don't die, they just get applied in new contexts.
The Third Screen. The first screen is the television, the second is the computer. The third screen is the mobile phone or other pocket device like the iPod touch. The iWatch will represent the fourth screen. You can find other assignments of screens to ordinal numbers, but for the purposes of the companies discussed on this board, these are the right ones. More on that later.
The Halo Effect remains in play, except that now we follow more than 2+ screens, and it's really more of an ecosystem issue than just one device affecting sales of another. To wit:
Fortune | Why Google, Amazon and Apple are making set-top TV boxes
VentureBeat | Google’s smart home springs to life: Mercedes, Jawbone, & more tap new Nest API
Android Police | Nest, Google, Samsung, ARM, And More Teaming Up To Form An Open Smart Home Networking Standard, The Thread Group
Apple Daily Report | Apple patent hints at an ‘iServe’ media server
The Globe And Mail | 'The Internet of Things': Google, Apple and the next big growth cycle
PC Magazine | Who Will Win the Internet of Things Race?
Yahoo! Finance | Poor, misunderstood Tim Cook is making all the right moves
I debated which of the last three links I should make the last one in the list, since all of them (as well as the first) are so ripe for follow-up. |
