Category: Internet of Things

Linear TV dips below half of US viewers

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Less than half of online US adults now watch linear TV as Younger Boomers and Generation X-ers adopt viewing habits previously associated with Millennials, a new report has said.

Forrester Research surveyed 3,166 adults aged 18 to 58 for the Making Sense Of New Video Consumption report and found that only 46% watched linear TV in a typical month. This trend was more pronounced among 18 to 34 year olds, with just 40% viewing TV this way, but even among older viewers the figure was 52%.

Streaming, whether from a paid or free service, was on a par with linear TV – at 40% – for Millennials, and these options were also proving attractive for Generation Xers and Younger Boomers, at 32% for free streaming and 30% for paid streaming.

Only recording on a DVR (37%) was more popular among older viewers, and even here, one third of Millennials continued to use this device.

That said, the report also showed that more than half (55%) of younger viewers still watched four hours or more of regular TV in the course of a week, with one third (34%) watching a similar amount online.

Business Insider reported Forrester’s food-based analogy, with linear TV and DVR viewing forming the “main courses” for older viewers, and which were supplemented with “side dishes” and “desserts” across the online spectrum, while younger groups snacked on “smaller portions of a wider array of dishes”.

Forrester analyst Jim Nail elaborated to Ad Exchanger. “There is clearly this trend toward watching on the network’s app, the MVPD’s [Multichannel Video Programming Distributor] app and Hulu, but clearly the content is still powerful and it still draws audiences advertisers want to buy,” he said.

“It is trickling into agency thinking. They know they need to look beyond age-gender demos and look at new data sources, even if they’re still buying ads in pods on ratings.”

So, for example, advertisers might look at shows in the light of viewers’ product buying habits rather than Nielsen ratings.

“You’re selling individuals and the right individual is going to be worth a lot more than $10 or $15 dollars a thousand to the right advertiser,” Nail noted.

Scottish startup PureLiFi raises $2M to create wireless networks from light bulbs | VentureBeat | Business | by Paul Sawers

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Scottish startup PureLiFi has announced a £1.5 million ($2.25 million) funding round — valuing the company at £14 million ($21 million) — as it looks to introduce Internet connectivity via light bulbs around the world.

Founded in 2012, PureLiFi — previously known as PureVLC — is a spin-out from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland’s capital, and is led by Professor Harald Haas. During a TED talk he gave back in 2011, Haas popularized the term “Li-Fi” to describe networked, bi-directional, wireless communication that uses visible light instead of traditional radio frequencies. You can watch that talk here:

http://venturebeat.com/2015/01/19/scottish-startup-purelifi-raises-2m-to-create-wireless-networks-from-light-bulbs/

How the Next Five Years Will Revolutionize Business

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Any interview with Peter Diamandis is worthy of your time. This is no exception.

The best way to become a billionaire is to help a billion people. Identify a product or service that can impact a billion people, begin with a near-term revenue stream and grow it using scalable, exponential technologies, gamification, crowd and community—all the tools that enable you to take big swings at the problem without having to scale a huge number of people. If you’re passionate about solving a problem, you literally can be a guy or gal in a garage using the internet and exponential tools and technologies to take on any problem at scale. An individual has the potential to impact the lives of a billion people in a decade.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/240638

The Internet of Things Now Belongs to the Product Managers

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So for me, CES demonstrated a very promising trend. The way that we talk about IoT is changing. We will probably still be barraged with talk about the Internet of Everything, and marketing around 50 billion connected devices (or is trillion?). But beyond that high level marketing, the real business of building ecosystems is beginning. It will not be one ‘industry’ but new products and features in many industries.

I think this was best on display at the Lowe’s booth. Lowe’s is giant hardware retailer, and I only stopped in their booth by accident, a friend of mine had just bought some locks for his home and saw a new model on display. Lowe’s was promoting its Iris ecosystem of connected devices. Beyond locks, this also included thermostats, sprinklers, windows, alarms and a whole range of other products you could expect to see on their shelves. I do not know much about Iris. It is a freemium service that sends sensor alerts for free and charges a monthly subscription of $10 if you want to apply more detailed rules to that (e.g. alerts when a window opens after 10pm). But they had a whole booth filled with partners. They are not relying on Nest or Apple or AT&T, but Schlage, Pella and other hardware suppliers. Traditional tech industry wisdom holds that eventually there will be one common platform that dominates. That is the economics of software. I think this may not happen in the home IoT segment. The market is just too big, with too many players. We could very well see multiple ecosystems thriving.

http://digitstodollars.com/2015/01/12/the-internet-of-things-now-belongs-to-the-product-managers/

Why AMD is staying out of the Internet of Things chip market

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AMD isn’t doing much in the Internet of Things (IoT), which is Intel’s major expansion area. But Byrne notes that the PC chip market is still a $40-billion-a-year opportunity. He said that AMD has to execute on its upcoming Carrizo family of accelerated processing units (APUs), which will be focused on the mobile-computing market. About 300 million PC processors and 90 million graphics chips are sold each year, and Byrne wants AMD to get its fair share of those sales.

“I’m not in the business to lose money,” Byrne said, in reference to whether AMD will go into the Internet of Things chip market.

But Byrne does believe that virtual reality is just the beginning of a whole new wave of demand for computing products in the future.

We caught up with Byrne this week at the 2015 International CES, the big tech trade show in Las Vegas. Here’s an edited transcript of our interview with Byrne.

http://venturebeat.com/2015/01/11/why-amd-is-staying-out-of-the-internet-of-things-chip-market-interview/