Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Tag: apple

  • Amazon and the battle for your pocket

    Amazon and the battle for your pocket

    Today Amazon is expected to launch a smartphone which the New York Times suggests will tether consumers to the company.

    With 240,0000 apps in its Kindle store, Amazon will be formidable competitor to Google Android devices and Apple. Like iTunes, Amazon also have a strength in already knowing the customer’s credit card details.

    The question is can Amazon be trusted? As we see with the Hachette book publishers dispute, Amazon is a company that’s ruthless in bullying suppliers and has a mandate to do so from its shareholders.

    With the smartphone becoming the centre of the connected lifestyle, the stakes are high as whoever controls the customer’s pocket controls the customer’s smarthome, smartcar, retail and health applications.

    Of course whoever wins this battle, they’ll still have to pay Microsoft for patents.

     

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  • Heating up the smarthome race

    Heating up the smarthome race

    Last week Apple sent a big message to the smarthome industry with their announcement of the Homekit, this week industrial control giant Honeywell has released its answer to the Google owned Nest smart thermostat with the Lyric.

    The Lyric smart thermostat system is quite an impressive package; along with the smart thermostat, it includes a smartphone app and cloud service that lets users control their home heating remotely.

    Other features are maintenance alerts, personalised heating settings and geolocation services for turning systems off and on when occupants are approaching or leaving home. To boot, Honeywell claim the Lyric can save households $200 a year.

    The big incumbent

    It’s a strong push into the smarthome market which Honeywell has been part of since the concept began thirty years ago and it shows incumbents don’t always sit back and wait for disrupters to steal their markets.

    The Lyric’s strength is Honeywell’s massive installed base and its army of experienced contractors; the likely way the smarthome market will evolve is that most installations are going to be carried out while homes are being built or refurbished which gives the incumbents even more strength.

    Open standards

    What’s missing in the media releases and review is whether the Lyric’s cloud services will offer open APIs to other developers and what format household data will be available in. If it’s a relatively open system then it will have a big advantage over Google’s Nest which all indications show is going to be closed to other providers.

    No doubt we’ll also be seeing compatible air conditioning units and heaters entering the market soon as well which will drive a standard of some sort to develop in the HVAC field, again the question of how open those protocols will be remains to be seen.

    The next move is Google’s, it will be interesting to see how the company will react to the incumbents fighting back and Apple’s strong positioning to dominate the market.

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  • Apple goes for the wearable market

    Apple goes for the wearable market

    “You’re more powerful than you think” is the message of Apple’s current iPhone advertising campaign.

    Their latest advert in the campaign features joggers, gymnasts, swimmers and golfers all using iPhone apps to connect with their wearable technologies.

    It didn’t take long after Monday’s World Wide Developer Conference announcement of Apple’s Healthkit for the company to get its message out about wearable technology.

    Undoubtedly we can look forward to soon seeing the Homekit smarthome campaign showing how Apple’s products make life easy in the smarthome.

    What’s absolutely clear is Apple’s determination to be the hub of the domestic internet of things, whether the vendors of those fitness and smarthome devices want to be locked into the world of Apple remains to be seen.

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  • Apple’s grab for the home internet of things

    Apple’s grab for the home internet of things

    As usual, Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference in San Francisco yesterday concentrated the attention of the tech world.

    This year’s was a little more subdued than usual with the key announcement being around Apple’s new Yosemite OSX operating system, iOS8 and the new developer Software Developer Kit (SDK).

    While a little underwhelming after all the speculation about smartwatches and fitness devices, these announcements mark a clear strategy for Apple to lock customers into their products through the cloud, smarthomes and wearable devices.

    Open, but closed

    Normally discussion about an SDK makes most people’s eyes glaze over, but Apple’s announcement marks a change in the company’s strategy in making over 4,000 APIs – Application Program Interfaces – open for developers to connect their programs into iOS8.

    This marks a change for the company in allowing programs to easily hook into Apple’s mobile operating system and while it looks like a move to openness, the ease of making fitness applications, home automation and smart car services actually helps lock users into the Apple ecosystem.

    Key to the ecosystem lock-in strategy are the Healthkit and Homekit services offering connections to health and home automation applications which are part of Apple’s Internet of things play, by offering easy access into the iPhone and iPad the company hopes to lock users of third party devices into the iOS world.

    Increasing vendor lock-in

    Similarly, the cloud services included with Yosemite and iOS8 increase that lock-in making it harder for users to step outside that ecosystem. It’s notable there’s no Android app version of the cloud service which indicates how Google is now Apple’s number one enemy.

    Apple’s announcement today shows how the company is positioning itself to lock users into their services as the internet of things rolls into businesses, cars and homes.

    It’s an indication the internet of things may well become a world of closed silos and it will be interesting to see how competitors react to Apple’s attempts to be the biggest walled garden.

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  • ABC Nightlife – security, dropping off the grid and 4D printing

    ABC Nightlife – security, dropping off the grid and 4D printing

    Paul Wallbank joins Tony Delroy on ABC Nightlife across Australia from 10pm Australian Eastern time tonight to discuss how technology affects your business and life.

    For the May 2014 spot we looked at computer security, specifically Apple ransomware and The Heartbleed bug along with dropping off the grid, 4D printing and the future of design.

    To protect from the Oleg Pliss ransomware – or any similar problems – have a strong password, enable the screen passkey and enable two factor authentication.

    Join us

    We’d love to hear your views so join the conversation with your on-air questions, ideas or comments; phone in on the night on 1300 800 222 within Australia or +61 2 8333 1000 from outside Australia.

    Tune in on your local ABC radio station from 10pm Eastern Summer time or listen online at www.abc.net.au/nightlife.

    You can SMS Nightlife’s talkback on 19922702, or through twitter to @paulwallbank using the #abcnightlife hashtag or visit the Nightlife Facebook page.

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