Design + Cloud : the winning ingredients for hardware

Pay attention to the new wave of connected objects

In 2001, Apple introduced the iPod and sparked a revolution with its “1000 songs in your pocket”. In retrospect, it was probably one of the first mass market devices whose value was primarily extracted from a cloud service (the iTunes store). The value was flowing down, from the cloud to the device.

Today, there is a wealth of devices and objects which are taking full advantage of the cloud. Like in the Internet of Things, the value flows up, from the “big data” collected on the devices to the cloud. Unlike it, those things are not simple objects with an RFID tag. They are beautiful objects which constantly update themselves for the delight of their customers. Hardware manufacturers should take notice of this trend. Soon enough, it will not be possible to sell a piece of hardware if it is not somehow connected to a constantly improving cloud service. No longer a finished product, hardware will become the visible part of an iceberg, i.e. the user interface of a continuously evolving end-to-end service.

The rise of the new smart objects

There is already a large number of smart connected objects. Here is a short list of interesting ones.

DropCam, the smart monitoring camera

Dropcam is a sleek Wi-Fi camera linked with a cloud-based video monitoring service providing free live streaming and remote viewing from the web and any smartphone. The end-user can also subscribe to a cloud video recording service. DropCam has been quite successful with its service and raised $30M last year to expand and get into mass market retailers.Dropcam, the cloud-based Wi-Fi video monitoring service

Nest, the smart thermostat

In Google’s 2013 Founders Letter, Larry Page says “We also recently acquired Nest, a company that’s taken unloved household products like thermostats and made them much more useful.” Nest designs and produces a “learning” thermostat which is so beautiful that you will not be ashamed of hanging onto your wall. What is even more interesting is the value which is extracted from the data the thermostat collects. Nest has partnered with Energy partners, i.e. energy utility companies, to help those companies control energy consumption, saving money for the consumer but also for the utilities (as they can better control their investments). It is a classical example of 2-sided business model, very familiar to the mother company, Google.The Nest connected thermostat

LIFX, the smart bulb

The LIFX is a Wi-Fi enabled, energy-efficient, multi-color light bulb that you can control with your smartphone. It is much more than a connected bulb as it helps transforms the ambiance of your home, thanks to the choice of 16 million colours that are at your disposal from the tip of your finger. While the first version seems to be mainly about the end-user controlling the smart bulb from a smartphone, it is easy to imagine more advanced use cases where multiple smart bulbs are controlled via a central console, manually or automatically based on the context.LIFX Smart Bulb — http://lifx.co/

Fitbit Aria, the smart weight scale

The Fitbit Aria™ tracks the weight, body fat, and BMI, painting a picture of the end-user progress. It wirelessly auto-uploads the data to the cloud and makes stats to help the end-user keep motivated and on track with their weight-loss program. The smartphone access helps the end-user sees her/his progress in her/his bathroom which a computer could never deliver. Similarly to the previous examples, it is easy to imagine how Fitbit could measure the efficiency of a particular diet by tracking the results of a large number of users.FitBit Aria — Smart weight scale — http://www.fitbit.com/aria

So what do those products have in common?

Those objects have at least 5 things in common:

1 — Great design: All those hardware products look good, if not amazing. Who would have thought that a security camera (Dropcam), a weight scale (Fitbit) or even a a thermostat (Nest) could look good? The Nest thermostat looks so good that you might want it on your wall just because of its design. In all the above examples, the new hardware start-ups fully understand that it is critical for hardware to look amazing, following the path that Apple, Braun and Sony have built decades ago.

2 — Always-on wireless connection: All those products are connected. Interestingly, they use the Wi-Fi home broadband connection to get connected to their cloud service. Wi-Fi is king.

3 — Cloud services to process and provide intelligence. They are 2 main functions of the cloud. First, the cloud is used to simplify the installation of the solution. There is indeed nothing else needed from the end-user than just connecting the hardware to the Internet thanks to the home Wi-Fi. After connection and registration, the system is fully functional. Second, the cloud stores data and process those data so then can be used to provide intelligent information back to the user and draw conclusions based on detected pattern (data science).

4 — Smartphone is the remote controller for all those new smart objects. The web user interface is available for browing through richer information, such as the long-term evolution of your weight or electricity consumption but the smartphone is really the casual interface to control them.

5 — A service, not just a product. Thanks to its software and the cloud, the product is upgradeable, new features are added over the lifetime and additional features (and new revenue streams) can be provided to the end-user post sale over-the-air. From that perspective, they are following the Apple way.

And why now?

There are several factors that explain why we are seeing so many new connected objects and start-ups tackling new problems and finding new opportunities. To list just a few:

1. ARM processors are becoming cheap. ARM processors are the same processors that you can find inside your smartphone. For instance, the Samsung Galaxy S2 had a 1.2 GHz dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 and even if the Galaxy S5 is already out there, the S2 was a rather powerful smartphone. You can find the processor used in the S2 on the cheap

2. Linux & Android: it is getting much easier for hackers to run their own firmware or their Linux on a piece of hardware controlled with an ARM processor. You can even run Android on those new objects!

3. 3D Printing is becoming easily: Thanks to 3D printing, you can make your first prototype and iterate easily the same way than hackers are iterating with software. Thanks to this amazing technology, hardware manufacturing is getting (kind of) closer to software engineering.

4. Wi-Fi home broadband: Can you find someone without home Wi-Fi broadband today? Those objects take advantage of Wi-Fi ubiquity

5. Smartphone penetration is huge and even more common than Wi-Fi home broadband

6. China is also a big part of the revolution. China is not only about low-cost, it is the only country where all the critical components (skills, scale, factories..) are concentrated around key locations such as Shenzhen

7. Open hardware initiatives like the open hardware movements and conference such as the Open hardware summit are strengthening the ecosystem

8. Cloud technologies becoming more accessible and cheaper

9. People getting increasingly used to have connected objects around them

10. Integrated electronic components such as the Spark Core. The Spark Core is a “tiny Wi-Fi development board that makes it easy to create internet-connected hardware. The Core is all you need to get started; power it over USB and in minutes you’ll be controlling LEDs, switches and motors and collecting data from sensors over the internet!”

Interesting companies such as Spark provide the tools to connect everyday electronics to the internet over Wi-Fi in a nice and integrated way

The Spark Core

Even if the press is currently all about smart wearables, smart connected objects might evade your life even faster. Hardware manufacturers not paying attention will get disrupted the same way that traditional software makers were disrupted by SaaS.