Hasta La Gadget!

For decades, German audio company Sennheiser has made some of the best headphones you can buy, regardless of whether you’re trying to keep it thrifty or splurge. In recent years, though, the legacy brand has had to adapt its technology to an era when how consumers listen to music has radically changed.

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I’m not gonna lie: It’s a lot like meeting Oz in his Emerald City.

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CES may be finished for another year, but one of the biggest themes of the show — that anything (cars, watches, mirrors, tables, whatever) can be ‘hardware’ — is just taking off. And today’s news of Google buying Nest for $3.2 billion underscores how Google wants to be the player at the front and center of hardware.

Google’s Nest buy may not be giving the search giant access to all the data that zooms across Nest’s apps, thermostats and smoke detectors (for now at least), but it will give Google something else: top-shelf design expertise for that next frontier of hardware, by way of a team of people brought together by two senior hardware veterans from Apple, one of whom is known as the father of the iPod.

This is a significant turn of events for Google.

Up to now, the search giant has cornered business — on desktop internet, mobile devices — through software, and then monetized those markets with data — specifically advertising data.

It’s been a fundamentally different approach from Apple, the quintessentially vertically integrated company that controls not just a platform and the services that run on it, but the devices they run on, too. (And with that, the lucrative margins that come from successful, premium hardware sales.)

Nest will give Google an opportunity to diversify its revenues by tackling a whole new market — connected home devices — with that vertical approach.

“This is the new hardware movement,” as one person described it. “Devices + services, product-market fit and research done through crowdfunding platforms, mix of retail partnerships and direct online sales.”

For Google, Nest is a particularly attractive example. Not only does it make an integrated piece of connected hardware for the home, but it’s designed with interoperability at its heart — in the initial case, by way of apps that you control on your iOS or Android smartphone, along with a well-developed, direct and online retail channel and loyal following.

It’s an area, in any case, that Google appears to have already been eyeing up for some time. In December, for example, The Information uncovered a test Google was running called EnergySense, which appeared to be a smart thermostat program that helped people lower energy consumption. This reportedly was being trialled on third party devices from Nest competitor Ecobee, but could now potentially find their way to Nest’s thermostats instead.

“Will Nest and Google products work with each other?” co-founder Matt Rogers asked in a hypothetical Q&A post earlier today. “Nest’s product line obviously caught the attention of Google and I’m betting that there’s a lot of cool stuff we could do together, but nothing to share today,” he answered.

Yet, to say that the acquisition is a boost for Google alone is not the whole story.

For months now, Nest has been facing a growing cacophony of criticism from customers that the software on its products was buggy. Leaning on Google’s software expertise could come in handy here (although the overlap between Google haters and Nest lovers could pose a problem in this regard).

And there is also the issue of Nest’s intellectual property and patent fights. Nest is facing patent infringement lawsuits from Honeywell and First Alert maker BRK. To help fight those and also to protect itself from copycats, it’s been aggressive on the patent front, with 100 patents granted, another 200 filed and a further 200 ready to file; and an ongoing licensing agreement with Intellectual Ventures. Bringing Google into the mix will be another major boost for safeguarding the company in these battles, too.

The Nest acquisition also raises questions of how Google’s other hardware interests may come into play going forward.

Motorola, which Google acquired for $12.5 billion in 2012, at one time looked like it could be a way for Google to take a new, vertical approach to smartphones and tablets. Ultimately, Motorola remained a partner among equals with other Android OEMs, and patents became one of the most crucial parts of the deal. Could the Nest acquisition, bringing a new focus on hardware creation, see Google bring in some of the IP and talent that Google picked up in that Motorola deal?

You’ll have to forgive us if we sound slightly exhausted. We have returned from a long, adventurous week at the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show and are now in a state of recovery.

Still, we found time to chat about our experience on this week’s TC Gadgets Podcast so that those of you who couldn’t make it to the show can get a taste of the biggest gadgets show in the world. Hopefully, you followed along with our coverage of the show, where we went 3D printer shopping with Martha Stewart and checked out one-wheeled skateboards and ushered in a new era of hardware startup competitions with CES Hardware Battlefield.

We discuss all this and more on this week’s episode of the TC Gadgets Podcast, featuring John Biggs, Matt Burns, Jordan Crook, and Darrell Etherington.

Enjoy!

We invite you to enjoy our weekly podcasts every Friday at 3 p.m. Eastern and noon Pacific. And feel free to check out the TechCrunch Gadgets Flipboard magazine right here.

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Intro Music by Rick Barr.

It goes without saying that every single home would need its fair share of electrical devices, and some of these are indispensable – such as a refrigerator, a computer, and perhaps even a TV set. As for a blood pressure monitor, I hardly see manual versions any more, but technology has moved at such a pace that the blood pressure monitor has now taken a twist where it is not only electronic, but runs sans wires as well. We are referring to Withings’ Wireless Blood Pressure Monitor, of course, which was unveiled at the recently concluded CES 2014.

The Wireless Blood Pressure Monitor happens to be a revamped version of its award-winning Smart Blood Pressure Monitor. What has the folks at Withings done to improve this particular blood pressure monitor? They have decided to throw in wireless ability, in addition to making it play nice with Android-powered devices. Not only that, Withings intends to take its vision of user-friendly connected health another step further.

Sporting a medically-approved blood pressure cuff, it makes it a whole lot easier to use, which would also drastically expand its reach. Withings makes life easier when it comes to taking measurements, where all that you need would be to wrap the cuff around their arm and turn it on. Once done, it will automatically hook up to your smartphone via Bluetooth, opening up the Withings Health Mate application. Tapping the start button, the cuff will inflate and starts to take down the wearer’s systolic, diastolic blood pressure in addition to heart rate. All results would be shown on the screen automatically, saved and compared to standards for better comprehension later on.

The Withings Wireless Blood Pressure Monitor will offer a 360° well-being experience, where it will retail for $129.95 a pop. Would you be interested in picking this puppy up when available?

Press Release
[ Withings Wireless Blood Pressure Monitor unveiled copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]