The incremental improvements in smartphones are less exciting in recent years. Besides the introduction of 5G, companies trying to get consumers’ attentions have introduced foldable phones this year – a more dramatic change in appearance (to show that you have the latest/expansive phone).
Foldable Phones by Companies
Samsung: Galaxy Fold
Huawei: Mate X, 2299 euros
Xiaomi
Apple (concept, not released):
No doubt, Qualcomm has dominated the world in 4G and LTE and has invested a lot to prepare for the 5G future. As one of first and steady leaders & supporters & promoters in 5G technology, Qualcomm revealed its flagship Snapdragon 855 mobile platform on December 5, 2018 in Hawaii. [Qualcomm Snapdragon Tech Summit 2018]
With the Mobile World Congress (MWC) happening this week and many world’s leading handset brands having announced their products to be launched later this year, Snapdragon 855’s worldwide penetration map has become clear.
1. First of all, the largest handset manufacturer by shipment Samsung announced its 10th anniversary phones – Galaxy S10 series.
There are four versions:
S10 series will use Snapdragon 855 platform in regions including North America, Latin America, Hong Kong, China, and Japan, and in Europe it will be using Samsung’s own Exynos 9820.
2. Xiaomi announced its Mi 9 in China on February 20.
Mi 9 might be the cheapest handset with Snapdragon 855 available globally, starting at RMB ¥2,999 in China and €450 in Europe. Xiaomi also revealed Mi 9 SE, priced lower at RMB ¥1,999, featuring Snapdragon 710. And a global launch event is in Barcelona during MWC on 24 February.
Another version of a previous handset by Xiaomi – Mi Mix 3 5G is also announced today at MWC. Mi Mix 3, when introduced in October 2018, uses Snapdragon 845; the new 5G version will use Snapdragon 855, plus Qualcomm’s X50 5G modem. The device will be available in May for €599 (cheapest 5G with Qualcomm’s X50 modem?) in selected Europe market. [TechCrunch]
Xiaomi is one of Qualcomm’s crucial allies in Chinese market (and globally).
3. OnePlus to announce OnePlus 7 5G with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 855 and X50 5G modem
A Chinese company that is doing surprisingly well in its global presence I’d say. By not focusing on Chinese market, OnePlus’ majority brand/marking/community efforts are outside of China IMO.
On the Qualcomm Snapdragon Technology Summit mentioned above, OnePlus has said it will work with EE (a division of BT, the largest operator in UK) to be the first to release a commercial 5G smartphone in Europe (second half of 2019 in UK and Finland, according to the recent report by USA Today).
Although OnePlus has been very successful in US before, it will solely focus on Europe at the first launch (different operator partners with Xiaomi).
4. Lenovo Z5 Pro GT – available only in China starting at ¥2698, first Snapdragon 855 phone available
5. LG G8 ThinQ and V50 ThinQ – announced on MWC today, both with Snapdragon 855, the difference between the two is that V50 has 5G connectivity by Qualcomm partnering with Sprint
So it becomes clear that Snapdragon 855 will be in
5G modem is more complicated with carriers’ spectrum but Qualcomm seems to be ready for its 5G globally, with the existing X50 and newly released X55. (And Apple will need another year from Intel for 5G…)
Tesla is the leader in the electric vehicle market obviously, but it may not be the only winner. As technology matures and become more advanced, it will become more of a business competition (assuming design & production generally won’t be a problem in the next decade).
And another round of fresh financing in this field is showing us the future to come, probably with a few leaders in different sub-segments of EV market.
And the self-driving is still a combating ground for companies. Because of its complexity, lots of collaborations and alliances are expected. (e.g. Toyota to invest $500 million in Uber for self-driving cars)
Led by Amazon, the $700 million investments in Rivian, announced on February 15, is the latest move. As the leader in electric pickup and SUV, Rivian will help Amazon to build the next generation logistics network. After all, although amazon is in e-commerce (and other) business, it is also a logistics company (so does Walmart). In the next 15-30 years will have its own (delivery) network & infrastructure, independent of USPS, UPS, FedEx, etc., comprised of (autonomous) airliner, trucks, delivery robots, etc… Yes, Amazon may become similar to the US postal system in the 19th century.
The R1T and R1S will be produced at Rivian’s manufacturing plant in Normal, Illinois, with customer deliveries expected to start in late 2020.
Just before that, on February 7, Aurora has raised more than $530 million in Series B financing for its self-driving technology, led by Sequoia Capital and includes “significant investment” from Amazon. [Techcrunch]
The investment was reported in early January [recode] and not a good news for companies like Tesla. The team is led by 3 industry leaders: CEO Chris Urmson, who was the CTO for Waymo, CPO (chief product officer) Sterling Anderson, Tesla’s former head of Autopilot, and CTO Drew Bagnellone, one of the founding members of Uber’s autonomous efforts. Aurora is now valued at more than $2.5 billion.
Meanwhile, Tesla Semi is probably still the most ready and earliest e-truck with auto-pilot. First unveiled in November 2017, Tesla Semi has its prototype traveled by itself (without any escort or accompanying vehicles) for a week to arrive at the J. B. Hunt headquarters in Arkansas on August 24, 2018.
What’s cool is that it was driven across the country alone (no escort or any accompanying vehicles), using the existing Tesla Supercharger network and an extension cord
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 25, 2018
Other self-driving companies have started to explore use cases.
Cruise Automation, the self-driving unit of General Motors, is teaming up with DoorDash to test a food delivery service in San Francisco using autonomous vehicles. The pilot will commence in “early 2019.” [Verge]
Nuro, which raised $940 million from Softbank Vision Fund in Februry, is focusing on self-driving bots and has a (pilot) partnership with Kroger.
And Waymo has launched/tested its self-driving ride service in Arizona in December 2018.
And Ford and Volkswagen might join together to bet on Argo AI, valued at about $4 billion, as Bloomberg reported on February 14.
And Daimler and BMW may go into an extensive cooperation in autonomous driving.
First half of 2019 might be the last chance to get into this game if winning the future of cars is expected.
To start with, Siemens made 2 acquisitions in 2018 – Enlightened Inc. and J2 Innovations – before acquiring Comfy, mentioned in the previous post.
Three main applications: lightening, HVAC system (heating, a ventilation, and air-conditioning), space utilization.
For example the lightening system, built on IoT architecture, consists of a network of LED lights and their patented sensors connected together to form a sensor and analytics platform. Data is collected 65 times/second to detect environmental and occupancy changes and take action on lighting needs in real-time.
Created FIN (Fluid INtegration) Framework, an open framework for building automation and IoT applications. It is used as an integration layer and itself doesn’t design/manufacture IoT devices.
According to its website, it employs an applications server technology with tagging and data modeling. FIN is a HTML5 browser based unified toolset optimized for efficient workflows.
A dynamic glass company, View raised $1.1 billion from SoftBank Vision Fund in November 2018.
With touch displays available..
Yes, it is the Age of Glass…
In the same space, we have another company Kinestral raising $100 million Series D in Jan 2019 (two weeks ago).
Famous for its early-stage collaboration with UPS – delivery indoor while occupants are out, Latch raised $70 million in August 2018.
Latch + UPS is competing with Amazon Key (then with its $1 billion acquisition of Ring in Feb 2018) in the same field.
Before Amazon’s move, in Oct 2017, Assa Abloy, the $23 billion Swedish lock giant that owns Yale and many other brands — announced that it is buying US-based smart lock maker August Home to double down on new technology. (TechCrunch)
Based in Europe, Sigfox is designing a Low Power Wide Area network (Ultra Narrow Band radio operating in the unlicensed bands) for IoT connectivity.
And of course the products to centralize data from big tech companies with Amazon and Google the most aggressive ones.
Smart building is a hot topic and will be at the center of future real estate, a $217 trillion giant industry.
So what is the core segments of smart building? This blog will provide a roundup of startups in the data + management space.
Probably most famous for its collaboration with WeWork in 2016, Comfy is an app that lets users to adjust the temperature, lights etc. in the office from smartphones.
Plus a data analysis and insights tool for office managers.
The company was founded in 2012, raised Seed & Series A from Claremont Creek Ventures and other investors including the Westly Group. In 2016, shortly before the WeWork collaboration, a Series B of $12 million was raised. Then in 2018, Building Robotics was acquired by Siemens (in a series of acquisitions) for an undisclosed amount.
Euclid is a leading spatial-analytics platform based in San Francisco. With fundings from NEA, Benchmark and other investors, It has built a proprietary analytic offering that uses WiFi signals to understand how space is used without the installation of any additional hardware. It can track the identity and behavior of people in the physical world.
In Feb 2019 (a few days ago), Euclid was acquired by WeWork (“The We Company”). The blog post from The We Company.
A maker of office management software, Teem was acquired by WeWork in Sep 2018 for around $100 million. Teem has grown from a conference room management tool to include office space management, (office) room display, visitor management, etc.
An energy-efficiency focused startup, BuildingIQ listed on Australian Securities Exchang and raised A$20 million in 2015, with an IPO marketcap of A$85 million.
Back in 2013, it raised $9 million from Aster Capital (backed by Schneider
Electric, Alstom and Solvay), the Venture Capital unit of Siemens Financial Services (SFS VC) and Paladin Capital.
In 2018, BuildingIQ acquired Buildingsense, another building data analysis company in Australia.
Formerly known as SCIenergy, Flywheel is a maintenance (task) & energy management startup based in Dallas. Invested by DFJ, Flywheel raised its latest round in 2014 by a group of energy focused funds, led by Braemar Energy Ventures and joined by the Westly Group and others.
Consolidation is coming faster than most could imagine…
A conversation with its founder, Dan Doctoroff
And a modeling tool (project) by Sidewalk Labs, Replica
Project Sidewalk Toronto and future building/housing
Apple may know well before the investors that their flagship iPhone would face a slowdown and it needs new growth strategies.
[Read more on iPhone’s sluggish sales and challenges & its recent pricing strategy]
Apple has talked about its services for a while and it’s not limited to Apple Care or Genius Bar (“Physical Services”), but more about Distribution Services.
I guess the most obvious change happened in 2016 when a new revenue sharing scheme was introduced by Apple – from a 30% cut to a 15%-cut-after-first-year. And other features were included such as “subscription group“… marching into subscription-based services revenue model.
Available in Australia, UK, and US, it’s currently a curated display place for publisher subscriptions. It could be developed into a Toutiao-like app for personalization and could be complimentary with Apple’s Stock app.
And it won’t be surprised to me that in the future you can trade stocks through this app – probably by upgrading to a premium version with other complementary benefits (like news/reports).
Anyway, music is where Apple found its turnaround with iTunes and iPod. Plus, it is the most explored region with established companies and new entrants.
Spotify Premium – $9.99 / month
YouTube Music – $9.99/month
Pandora Plus – $4.99/month & Premium – $9.99/month
Apple has long reported to be interested in contents distribution especially video. And rumors about an acquisition of Netflix didn’t come from nowhere.
A New York Times report back in March 2018.
A CNBC report in October 2018 – Apple plans to give away original content for free to device owners as part of new digital TV strategy.
Apple has cash and ability for original contents (and can acquire/build a studio). Apple has educated customer base (thanks for Netflix). Apple has introduced Clip for iOS short videos (think about Snapchat and Douyin, plus its ability in music and messaging). Apple has AppleTV and AirPlay.
There are just too many things to do in this space, broadly speaking.
And the competition is fierce. Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Youtube TV, Facebook/Instagram TV, Disney/Hulu, AT&T/HBO…
And the AR/VR future…
Let’s see.
It might be something new. But Apple could introduce a monthly plan to play most iOS games freely (with some exceptions maybe). Just like what Tencent did with WeChat Read – subscriptions that can read all books on its app.
Let’s see what Steam will do… Steam has subscription-based products, although not a bundle.
A master bundle plan for Apple users in the future? Possible.
Both are essential parts of running a successful business in health care.
An electronic health record (EHR) is a digital version of a patient’s paper chart. EHRs are real-time, patient-centered records that make information available instantly and securely to authorized users. (healthit.gov)
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) sets the standard for sensitive patient data protection. Companies that deal with protected health information (PHI) must have physical, network, and process security measures in place and follow them to ensure HIPAA Compliance. (digitalguardian.com)
PHI is any demographic information that can be used to identify a patient. Examples include: names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, insurance information, phone numbers, full facial photos, and health care records, to name a few examples. (compliancy-group.com)
US federal government began implementing VistA (formerly known as the Decentralized Hospital Computer Program) at the Department of Veteran Affairs. A study by the Institute of Medicine (now National Academy of Medicine) began in the 1980s, and its findings recommended the use of EHRs when they were published in 1991. (readwrite.com)
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was passed on August 21, 1996, with the dual goals of making health care delivery more efficient and increasing the number of Americans with health insurance coverage. Since its implementation, healthcare organizations have been issued huge fines for non-compliance, e.g. Anthem $16 million HIPPA fine paid in 2018.
Tough regulations were implemented before the applications (EHRs, etc.) grow into their best format/position in the healthcare system. The regulations made the softwares slow to upgrade/adjust themselves and prevented certain competitions.
EHRs are only an example of healthcare data regulated by HIPAA but a good one. It could have been a program like Apple Health Kit (on patients’ end) in the current era of well-designed apps like uber/gmail/amazon/instagram; but it was limited at the beginning stage and was left no time to refine itself. No wonder most parts are a vivid demonstration of tech/IT system some twenty years ago.
