June 24, 2014
Mergers and acquisitions indicate rapidly growing markets ahead. Google made a 3.2B$ acquisition of Nest in January. Now they just followed on with an acquisition of the Wi-Fi surveillance camera maker Dropcam for 555M$. Thermostats, smoke alarms and cameras – what is Googles plan? I think it is the homes and maybe offices they are after. There are many thermostats, smoke alarms and smart cameras available but Nest and Dropcam definitely comes with a cool design which should at least bring home healthier margins. People love nice products! Google has always been interested in Wi-Fi and it’s not a wild bet that there will be Wi-Fi in homes and offices. But this can’t be enough, they must be going after a service model with recurring revenues and collecting data from these devices to store, manage, analyze and sell. I have always claimed that “data is the gold of M2M” and I am confident that Google shares that view.
Provided I’m right, I still questions that idea. Even if Google spend another couple of B$ to buy companies with cool things (Sonos could be a good target) they will never get market share over maybe 5-10% and scattered around. I understand that they could sell the information back to the users of these devices but that seems to be a difficult path to get the money back. And if they try to sell the data elsewhere I would believe the owners of the devices and policymakers would have a view on that. But Google knows all that. The recurring revenues are obviously attractive but it feels questionable to pay this much to get there.
On top of all I believe their will have to be at least three separate wireless networks in homes: an unmanaged Wi-Fi with good performance but only best effort services, a really secure fully managed network for security related applications like door locks, surveillance and medical monitoring, and maybe even a third managed low bandwidth network for connecting things like fridges, coffee machines, etc. And even worse, we will see a mix of WAN and LAN technologies being used as well. I simply don’t see how one can deliver sensible services like surveillance or smoke detection over an unmanaged best effort Wi-Fi network. Successful companies with such services like Verisure today typically manage their own network.
So I am probably wrong. Goggle sees something I don’t. And they also understand the down-side of connected hardware since Nest just had to recall 440.000 smoke alarms due to a potential risk that they didn’t alarm immediately. But I am happy for their acquisitions since it stimulates entrepreneurs, customers and other companies who consider playing a sincere role in building the Internet of Everything.
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Business Models, Consumer market, IoE, IoT, M2M | Tagged: Business model, camera, Dropcam, Google, Home network, Internet of Everything, Internet of Things, Machine-to-Machine, Nest, Smart home, Smoke detector, Sonos, Surveillance camera, thermostat, Wi-Fi | 
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Posted by magnusmelander
April 10, 2014
While brands like Kodak and Agfa rarely are mentioned together with photography any longer, people are taking and dealing with photos all the time and everywhere. This is yet another astonishing example of what happens when an industry moves from analog to digital. The famous “Kodak moment” belongs to history and mobile phones with powerful cameras, panoramic pictures, SnapChat and selfies are here. With 24 or 36 photos in an expensive roll with even more expensive development and printing needed, we paid a lot of attention to each and everyone of our photos. Today we take shots to remember the registration plate of the car we rented, what was written on the whiteboard and to digitalize a piece of paper and transfer it somewhere.
But today I met the founder of a start-up in Berlin who immediately blew my socks off. His company is called
Panono and they have put 36 cameras in a small ball loaded with sensors and technology. With one quick toss of the Panono Ball Camera will capture everything in every direction into a high resolution 360° X 360° full- spherical panoramic image. What a wonderful idea! And even better, you will be part of the photo yourself! That takes selfies to a new level.
It goes without saying that the Panono Ball Camera is connected via mobile phones to the cloud.
For only 549€ this wonderful product is yours! Support truly innovative entrepreneurs! Go buy!
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1 Comment | Consumer market, Inspiring example, M2M | Tagged: ball camera, camera, EIT ICT, Internet of Things, IoT, M2M, Machine-to-Machine, panino, panoramic, User interaction | Permalink
Posted by magnusmelander
Mergers and acquisitions indicate rapidly growing markets ahead. Google made a 3.2B$ acquisition of Nest in January. Now they just followed on with an acquisition of the Wi-Fi surveillance camera maker Dropcam for 555M$. Thermostats, smoke alarms and cameras – what is Googles plan? I think it is the homes and maybe offices they are after. There are many thermostats, smoke alarms and smart cameras available but Nest and Dropcam definitely comes with a cool design which should at least bring home healthier margins. People love nice products! Google has always been interested in Wi-Fi and it’s not a wild bet that there will be Wi-Fi in homes and offices. But this can’t be enough, they must be going after a service model with recurring revenues and collecting data from these devices to store, manage, analyze and sell. I have always claimed that “data is the gold of M2M” and I am confident that Google shares that view.
connectcompute 