Apple has had a patent approved today (via AppleInsider) that could make it a leader in a new kind of display material technology: Sapphire glass. The patent describes various methods for attaching sapphire crystal to electronic devices, and includes a description of how it does this with the sapphire glass covering the iPhone camera lens introduced with the iPhone 5, as well as a means for attaching sapphire as a cover for the whole display.
In the past, the iPhone has used Gorilla Glass to protect its screen (though some believe it may have stopped recently); Apple championed this tech and basically made its maker Corning the default choice for smartphone OEMs looking for a tough, scratch-resistant material to use to protect their screens. But last year, Apple made a $578 million bet on sapphire (which is used often in good watches) with GT Advanced Technologies to have it build a manufacturing plant for the material in Arizona.
When the deal was announced, our own Matthew Panzarino took a closer look at the investment, and at what sapphire glass could provide Apple. Sapphire, including the lab grown variety, is much tougher, more resistant to scratches, and more resistant to breakage after scratches than even Gorilla Glass, which has a strong reputation in all those arenas. It’s heavier, too, but would potentially allow Apple to use thinner pieces for both space and weight savings.
Of course, there are also existing needs at Apple for sapphire glass, including the iPhone camera lens and the new Touch ID-compatible home button, which many expect to make its way to other Apple devices including the iPad eventually. But the patent uses an iPhone-type device as its illustrative example, and specifically states that while the gadget depicted is a “smart phone,” the techniques described could be used on any number of devices. A smartwatch might be a good target case, for example, given that Apple has been rumored to have been working on one for some time, and that sapphire is a very common case material used in the manufacture of watches from most leading brands.
The patent itself details ways in which the sapphire material could be attached to the shell or casing of an electronic device, with examples in illustrations detailing jigsaw-type and tounge-and-groove mechanics for keeping the glass firmly in place.
At this stage, it’s more likely that Apple is simply laying the groundwork for a potential shift to sapphire in its phones and other devices a considerable way down the road, rather than tipping its hand for any immediately upcoming change in how its devices are made, but this patent demonstrates that it is indeed thinking in terms of smartphone displays and other applications that go beyond its current uses of the material.
Users of flagship smartphones such as Apple’s iPhone 5s and Samsung’s Galaxy S4 are continuing to suck down more data than their tablet-wielding counterparts, according to a large-scale survey of mobile data consumption in 2013 conducted by JDSU (which last year bought mobile data analytics company Arieso, the company that previously ran the annual survey).
Last year’s mobile data consumption survey, which looked at 2012 data, also found flagship smartphone device users outpacing the data consumption rates of tablet users.
But the most data thirsty phone users of all have an iPhone 5s burning a hole in their pocket.
As with the 2012 study, the 2013 survey examined the data demands of more than one million subscribers using more than 150 different devices over a single, 24-hour weekday in a Tier-1 European market, which had a mixture of urban and suburban morphologies. But for the first time the survey also studied a developing market for comparative purposes — with a further one million+ subscribers studied in this market over the same 24-hour period.
To ensure statistical validity the study only looked at the data demands of popular devices — i.e. those represented by at least 1,000 subscribers (conversely, the most popular devices had subscriber rates of well over 10,000 apiece).
The results are pretty telling about the habits of flagship smartphone owners, if not entirely surprising. You guys are a data-demanding bunch. Especially if you happen to own the latest iPhone.
Continuing the trend of the past three years’ findings, the 2013 study found that mobile subscribers using Apple’s flagship smartphone are the most data-hungry smartphone users of all. And they’re getting hungrier still: users of the new iPhone 5s are even more data-hungry than previous top-of-the-line iPhone owners — with the study describing them as the most voracious smartphone users it’s yet seen, with “unprecedented increases in uplink and downlink data demands”.
According to the findings, iPhone 5s users demand 7x as much data as iPhone 3G users in developed markets (the study uses the iPhone 3G as its mid-range benchmark device), and 20x as much data in developing markets.
The most data-demanding device in 2013 was the iPhone 5 — but iPhone 5s users are demanding a fifth (20%) more data than iPhone 5 users in developed markets, and 50% more data in developing markets.
Owners of Apple’s current flagship phone also have a greater data consumption than the Android-based Samsung Galaxy S4, which had a 5x data generation rate vs the iPhone 3G in developed markets and 11x in developing markets.
The SGS4 did rank a lot higher for uplink data generation — coming third in developed markets (vs sixth place for the iPhone 5s). The study goes on to note that the average user of the SGS4 generates almost as much uplink data as eleven iPhone 3G users in the developing market it analysed.
The SGS4′s “prolific” uplink data generation usage is described as “consistent with the improved high-resolution 13-megapixel primary camera and the 2-megapixel front-facing camera”. (The iPhone 5s has an 8MP rear camera.)
Both Apple and Samsung are amply represented in the top data gobbling devices across developed and developing markets, as the below tables from the report show:
The report also flags up the relatively reduced amount of data consumption by users of the lower cost iPhone 5c compared to previously released iPhones. ”This is consistent with the marketing of the device relative to the new flagship iPhone 5s,” the report notes.
Bottom line: even though the iPhone 5c is a shiny new iPhone, it’s not a flagship iPhone so the owners of this device have more modest data consumption habits (on average).
On the tablet front, Apple’s fourth-gen iPad has replaced the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 in the top tablet spot in the studied developed market (relative to 2012’s study). No sign of the iPad Air as yet, but it’s a little too early for that device to crop up on the analysed networks (being as it went on sale in November, when the data was being gathered).
The study also points out that — as with the don’t-call-it-cheap-but-it’s-not-a-flagship iPhone 5c — Apple’s lower priced tablet, the iPad mini, yields lower data consumption rates than its flagship tablet models. The report notes that iPad mini users consume only 80% of the downlink data consumed by 2nd and 3rd generations of iPads.
“Similar to the iPhone 5c, the iPad mini was not intended to be a flagship device and instead has sought to occupy a niche position in the market,” it adds.
Another characteristic of mobile data consumption detailed by the study applies to the hungriest 1% of all subscribers. The report notes that these users consume more than half of the downlink data volume — which it describes as “broadly consistent” with the trends reported over the past two years in developed markets.
However the device-types these hungriest of data-hungry mobile users are conducting their bandwidth hogging activities on has seen a bit of a shift. The report notes that in the developed market being analysed, smartphones now constitute the majority of “extreme devices”, taking a 63% fraction vs 40% in 2012′s study. While tablet device usage among this group has experienced the largest relative decline, dropping from 6% in 2012 to 2% in 2013.
It’s possible this is a consequence of smartphones getting bigger and thus more tablet-esque — aka the rise of the phablet — allowing extreme users to choose a compromise device that’s quasi-pocketable (compared to a full-fat tablet), and thus able to appeal to their desire to remain tethered at all times to the Internets, while still being large enough to eyeball most of the stuff they want to on the go.
Bigger smartphones, after all, often more screen real-estate for performing data-consuming activities. And, unlike tablets, these gizmos are merely a handy pocket away from users’ fingertips.
The report also touches on the role being played by LTE/4G in encouraging data-gobbling — noting that the higher speeds supporting by this next-gen cellular tech are doing the equivalent of pouring lighter fuel on the data consumption bonfire.
“The most extreme 0.1% of all users consume nearly half of all downlink LTE data,” the report notes. “Extreme behavior in UMTS required ten times as large a fraction (0.1% -> 1%) to get to half of all downlink data. As such, we can declare that LTE users are ten times more extreme than UMTS users.”
In other words, throw LTE into the mix along with powerful, fatty phablets and increasing levels of mobile data gluttony is a given. It’s almost enough to make you pity the poor carriers whose networks have to shoulder the burden of “extreme users” and data-diva flagship owners.
*Almost*
“The faster the speeds that mobile operators provide, the more consumers swallow it up and demand more,” concludes report author Dr Michael Flanagan.
“One would expect a honeymoon period in which early adopters test their toys. But for 4G users to consistently exhibit behaviour 10 times more extreme than 3G users well after launch constitutes a seismic shift in the data landscape.”
It only took four hours for the Glyph, a head-mounted “personal theater” from Avegant, to reach its $250,000 funding goal on Kickstarter.
Unlike the Oculus Rift’s focus on virtual reality, or Google Glass which forces a heads-up display into every facet of life, the Glyph is a media-centric device. For now, it offers a nice pair of high-end headphones with a headband that can transform into an immersive display.
The $499 wearable headset, complete with over-the-ear headphones, uses a new display technology the company called “Virtual Retina Display”. The Virtual Retina Display involves no screen at all, instead projecting images directly onto the retina with a complex array of LEDs and mirrors.
According to co-founder Ed Tang, this is meant to mimic the way our eyes work in real life, when they aren’t focused in on a computer or TV or smartphone screen, providing a much sharper, more realistic viewing experience.
The Glyph isn’t supposed to be a virtual reality device that cuts you off. Instead, it’s meant to be a headphone replacement with an optional display.
The Glyph can work natively with any audio or video source (including Xbox, smartphones, Netflix, etc.) through an HDMI/HML cord, and Avegant ensures that users can get to whatever content they want from anywhere in the world through a single cable.
But what about head-tracking?
The Glyph is packed with a 3-axis Gyro, accelerometer, and a digital magnetometer to allow for head-tracking when content is compatible. Tang claims that the team is working on mapping the headtracker to a mouse, with the goal of making most PC-based first person games will work right out of the box.
Later on, they’ll release some developer tools to give coders the option to build out mobile-based content.
We caught up with co-founder Ed Tang to discuss the instant success on Kickstarter and future plans for the Glyph.
TechCrunch: Can you give me a little background on Avegant as a company?
Ed Tang: My co-founder, Allan Evans, was getting his PhD at U of Michigan and doing advanced research on various medical devices and microsystems. He was working on projects for the U.S. government’s national research lab while he was out there, and was encouraged by people in the military to look into building new display technology. For things like night vision and other military uses, the performance has always been really bad on these displays, which causes a lot of eye strain after more than an hour, and users become actively tired.
So he approached things from an engineering standpoint as well as a physiological standpoint, thinking about how we, as humans, see. Our eyes get tired if we stare at displays, but when I look out the window or around the room, things are comfortable and realistic. So we chose to replicate the kind of light we see in real life, which is reflective light. Emissive light doesn’t have the same properties that make it less exhausting and more realistic.
The system he built is a virtual retina display, and it’s a display with no screen. Instead the image is being projected onto the retina, the way we see things in normal life, with a very low-power LED. Kind of like the flashlight on the end of a keychain.
The cool thing is that anything you put into this technology, from a movie to a game or whatever, looks so much more crisp and vivid and comfortable, than any other display we have ever seen.
So once we realized what it could do, we had to make it smaller. At the beginning of last year, the prototypes were the size of a coffee table, and it felt like going to an eye doctor exam. You sat down in this huge machine, and adjusted various objects around you, with tons of cords. Still, we proved the concept, which let us raise a little funding from friends and family, which let us repackage it into the size of a big pair of glasses.
We had some great reviews on that product, and after talking to consumers and looking at test cases, seeing how people wanted to use this, we realized that people are engaging more and more with mobile devices, and less and less with TVs at home. Most of what people do with their smartphones and tablets is watching videos, playing games and listening to music.
The device that really wins is the one that fits what people want to do today, which meant building a very premium set of headphones into this revolutionary display tech. That way, when you want video content, you can flip down the headband and turn headphones into a display.
When we looked at other head-mounted display tech out there, there was never a good audio solution paired with it. We knew we had to change that. But one of the challenges is that if we’re going to replace someone’s high-end headphones, our product has to be really good. People are picky about headphones.
TC: So how did you go about doing that? Do you have people on your team focused solely on the audio experience?
ET: We have a couple of audio engineers on our team. One worked on projects for TI, Amazon, and Google, and they were both trained by the top audio engineers in the world. They helped us a lot on our current design.
We benchmarked our headphones against all of the competing high-end headphones out there, from Sennheiser to Audio Technica to Bose or anything else we could find over $300, and we feel we match up against the best of them. We want the user to start out with a really accurate, super precise sound and then slightly tune it to be more pleasing.
I’d gladly put our headphones up against any audio product over $300.
TC: In your Kickstarter video, you had some great endorsements from Second Life and High Fidelity founder Philip Rosedale and Netflix VP of IT Operations Mike Kail. Why are other people so excited about the Glyph?
ET: These endorsements are well deserved. When it comes to the Glyph and partners, it’s more about helping the entire industry, not about us.
Many people we talk to believe that video won’t stay the same as it is today, where it’s a passive experience around your TV. We’re going to see a massive change in how consumers consume media and what we’re doing here with Glyph is something that excites people in the industry.
For Philip, a realistic looking head-mounted display is the key to virtual reality. It’s what’s always been missing, to let you look around and hear audio change as you turn your head. So that the experience is truly immersive and convincing.
Netflix, on the other hand, is an interesting company that has changed its business model a number of times, from DVD rental to streaming to content creation. This company has seen a huge decline in traditional media delivery first hand, and is being proactive about the future of the mobile market. As bandwidth has gotten cheaper and faster, people can use Netflix on their phone, but the device that delivers the best experience hasn’t reached market yet.
TC: Aside from similar devices we’ve seen from Sony and other large players, the Oculus Rift seems to be one of your competitors in the head-mounted, virtual reality display space. How do you differentiate?
ET: We actually don’t consider ourselves direct competitors with Oculus. They’re solely focused on virtual reality, and growing interest and excitement in the virtual reality space again.
This is fantastic for us, because the more familiar people get with head-mounted displays, the better it is for all of us. That includes Oculus and Google Glass and anything else. But while Oculus is focused on virtual reality, we’re focused on more general audience use.
We want the business professional, or even my mother to use the Glyph. These are people that really want to engage in media and play games and watch movies and listen to music. The Glyph is a multimedia device for every day use, and people listen to more music than they watch video.
So we built something that let them switch from one to the other easily, when they want it.
Another big differentiator between what we do and straight virtual reality is how cut off from the rest of the world you are. You can’t hear or see anything around you. We don’t want to do that.
If you’re going to use our product in the airport or on the train, you need to feel comfortable, so we tried to maximize peripheral vision around the user. That way, when the drink cart comes by on a plane or the passenger next to you wants to go to the bathroom, you know what’s going on.
TC: One of the biggest issues with wearable tech has been that mainstream audiences have trouble wearing their technology. Google Glass and Oculus Rift target geekier, more tech-savvy audiences who are more willing to adopt. How do you plan to tackle the mainstream audience who seems to be resistant to wearables?
ET: When you look at wearable technology, everybody is focused on the technology and not the wearable part. If people aren’t willing to wear it, it doesn’t matter how cool the technology is. I have Google Glass but I feel really uncomfortable wearing it. People stare at you and look at you funny. When I’m just hanging out and talking to my buddy, there’s this thing in between us all the time.
That’s why we went after the headphone form factor. You can wear the Glyph just as you do any other headphones. Since people engage in audio way more than video most of the time, they can replace the headphones they already own and feel totally normal wearing the product. No one around you will think you’re doing something weird by wearing them.
But when you want to tune out the rest of the world and watch a movie, you can flip down the visor and watch movies. We look at it as one small step toward wearable technology, because we’ve given the user something they’re already comfortable with wearing and added an extra feature to it.
That’s why I think the smartwatch will be so successful. Because people already wear watches, so it doesn’t look weird or out of place.
TC: You’ve raised your $250k goal in less than four hours, and it doesn’t look like demand is slowing down. We’ve seen many Kickstarter projects blow past their goal and later run into manufacturing or shipping issues. Are you prepared to supply this sort of demand?
ET: We’ve prepped all of our manufacturing for low quantity and high quantity demand.
For the foreseeable future, we’ll be just fine with this demand. On our Kickstarter pages, we’re claiming a December delivery date, but we expect to have units ready to ship a few months before that. We’ve manufactured a lot of these components already in lower quantities as a test run, to explore and answer all of these questions. And we feel very confident.
Now, it’s just about taking current prototypes we have and improving fit and finish. The prototypes look great and image quality is fantastic, but we want a premium quality product that isn’t even a little bit bulky or heavy. We’re not worried about manufacturing because having more units actually makes it easier for us to scale our model.
Building 1,000 units is easier than building 100.
TC: Companies have been trying this sort of technology for years. What has changed over time that makes this a viable product with lots of demand?
ET: People have been trying to do this for ten or twenty years, but there are a number of reasons why it hasn’t picked up at all.
First, the visual experience has to be there. There hasn’t been a head-mounted display that has a good enough visual experience. The Glyph experience isn’t just decent, it’s better than a TV or a movie theater. In fact, it’s ruined going to the movies for me.
The second thing is form factor. It has to fit in your life. It can’t be something extra you have to carry or something cumbersome that isn’t comfortable to wear. By replacing headphones, the Glyph takes up the same spot in your bag, and even if you don’t watch a lot of video you still have fantastic headphones.
The third factor is that it has to work with people’s existing content. People want to watch their own stuff, portably, and they want to be able to watch it on all the devices they have today. It has to be battery-powered with a single cable. The Glyph runs all the content you already own.
I never wanted to build something that required developers to create content for it. I would hate selling something to someone on Kickstarter and having to tell them that they won’t see good content for it for another six months.
The last part is audio. If you don’t combine audio with it than you only offer part of the experience. It’s the key to letting the general consumer adopt this technology.
It may seem like small potatoes, but Polish 3D printer manufacturer Zortrax has chalked a 5,000 unit order from Dell. This is the first I’ve heard of a mass order of home 3D-printing equipment and it means a real boon for the budding Olsztyn-based company.
“Dell kept in touch with us when we were still in the middle of our Kickstarter campaign. We weren’t in a position to make them a reasonable business offer at that time, since our production volume was very limited,” said Rafał Tomasiak, Zortrax CEO. “At that point in time the production was very tedious, every single printer was quality checked and tested by us. Business negotiations with Dell were stalled at some point and we focused on shipping the printers to our Kickstarter backers. Now the situation is much different, we are prepared for large quantity orders.”
Zortrax launched last May and is now shipping to happy Kickstarter backers. I’ve used the printer multiple times and was very impressed by the print quality and build. The company is poised to be a major player in the European market and, with this investment by Dell, potentially globally. The company said the the printers are headed toward Dell’s central and east Asia offices.
“Frankly speaking, we were surprised that any company, even a company like Dell, wants to place such an order! But after a while we realized how many printers we use in our own office… For a designer who prints a large number of prototypes it is much more useful to use 10 smaller printers on one desk, which operate simultaneously, rather than one with a larger build volume,” said Tomasiak.
Nokia will report its fourth-quarter 2013 earnings tomorrow, a seminal moment for the company as the figures will represent the last full period in which it will own the hardware assets that it is selling to Microsoft.
It also matters as Nokia’s Lumia Windows Phone sales in the quarter will provide a report card of sorts for Microsoft. Given that Nokia makes and sells the vast majority of Windows Phone devices, its sales are proxy for the larger market for the phones. So if Nokia had a good quarter selling Lumias, Microsoft had a good quarter selling Windows Phones.
Microsoft will report its earnings later in the day.
Nokia sold 8.8 million Lumia devices in the third quarter of 2013. Given extant growth trends, we would expect Nokia to sell more phones in the fourth quarter. Add the simple fact that the period includes the holiday sales cycle, and we expect another bump. This means that Nokia should sell — easily — more than 10 million Lumia handsets in the quarter.
The stakes here are high for Nokia, given that it’s hard to win in this context, but very easy to lose. If it sells 11.5 million handsets instead of 11 I doubt people will laud it. But a weak number could cast a pall. The irony is that the asset in question is what the company is selling, so a negative result may not have as sharp an impact on its share price as it otherwise might.
Investors are expecting Nokia to earn around €0.08 ($0.11) in the quarter on revenue of €6.4 billion ($8.671 billion). It will be interesting to parse the company’s earnings as it intends to mark the assets it is selling as discontinued businesses. Nokia will dramatically change once it and Microsoft clear the final regulatory hurdles that sit between their consummation.
For the full-year period, Nokia is expected to earn €0.07 ($0.09) (on aggregate revenue of €23.7 billion ($32.11 billion) in revenue. That latter figure is a firm decline from its 2012 tally of €30.2 billion ($40.92 billion). And Nokia, selling off another chunk of revenue, is about to slim again.
So that’s that. Keep your eye on the Lumia number, as it matters for both firms.
HiddenRadio was one of the first crowdfunding successes. The original model nearly hit $1 million on Kickstarter in 2012 and spawned legions of fans. The creators, John Van Den Nieuwenhuizen and Vitor Santa Maria, built a small Bluetooth speaker that offered excellent frequency response and acceptable bass with a very cool design aesthetic. Now they’re back for more.
HiddenRadio 2 is the pair’s latest creation and it’s already well on its way to funding. The new model offers surprisingly rich sound out of a case that is about as big as soup can. However, unlike a soup can the HiddenRadio looks great and will remind some of the new Mac Pro with its staid styling, touch-sensitive top, and simple setup.
I got a chance to sit down with Van Den Nieuwenhuizen last week and heard the new HiddenRadio in a nearly empty bar. He compared it with a few popular speaker systems including the Jambox and I was duly impressed. While we couldn’t set it too loud, you could definitely hear a nice presence in the HiddenRadio 2 and excellent bass.
The pair have also added some new features to the device including a far better port placement as well as a way to connect two $119 HiddenRadios together to create a stereo pair. None of their competitors have these features. That is has a noise-cancelling microphone and can act as a speakerphone are just gravy.
The design is very impressive. The outer shell is chromed and there is a touch-sensitve top that allows you to spin a finger to control the volume or tap to turn the music on and off. A single tap will also raise the lid off of the speaker grill for listening.
It’s fascinating to watch mass CE products like this make it in Kickstarter. Whereas the really geeky stuff tends to take off – Pebble watches and Udoo boards are surprisingly popular – the interest peters out once you enter into speaker territory. However, with high-design and low cost items like HiddenRadio you can definitely see a move in a more general direction. I’d love it, for example, if Sony or Samsung put a product up for crowdfunding. It would show a definite interest in the audience and could be a very successful move.
As smartwatches become a device category that most major hardware makers are turning their attention to, there’s a question of how much smartphone utility we’ll be able to translate to the wrist. One big convenience hurdle is making it possible to reply to texts and emails quickly from the wrist, and that’s where Minuum‘s go-anywhere software keyboard comes in.
The Minuum keyboard from Toronto-based startup Whirlscape is an alternative input method originally prototyped on smartphones that makes it easier to type naturally without using much of the screen. It launched previously in beta on Android, and has done well on smartphones, according to user reviews.
Whirlscape had always designed their keyboard to be usable on any number of connected devices, including wearables, the founders told me in the past. Today, they’ve got proof: As you can see in the video above, Minuum running on a Galaxy Gear smartwatch manages text input much more conveniently than you might imagine possible from a screen so small. It was filmed in a single take, too, according to the Minuum team, without any fancy camera tricks.
For now, Minuum says this is just an “in-house demo,” at least until Samsung opens up the Gear platform, but the company also tells me that it’s already in talks with other smartwatch manufacturers who can put the software on shipping devices “in the upcoming months.”
BlackBerry has an almost uncanny ability to not die when it’s been written off again and again. Today, the Pentagon has announced that it will install 80,000 BlackBerry handsets on its network by the end of January. According to Fox News, the new phones are part of the Pentagon’s “new mobile program for unclassified work.” BlackBerry’s shares soared 10% in midday trading on the news.
The Pentagon’s faith in BlackBerry gives the company the sort of credibility it needs to retain corporate clients and keep investors interested in its future — that it has one.
Today’s gains pushed BlackBerry temporarily north of the $10 per share mark. The company is trading at the time of writing a hair below that threshold. BlackBerry ended 2013 at $7.44, meaning it is up around 34% so far in 2014.
Given that we are less than a month into the year, that’s somewhat impressive.
BlackBerry has suffered from declining device sales, loss of corporate clients, and eroding mind share more than commensurate with its slipping unit volume. This Google Trends chart is telling, I think, showing the decline in interest in BlackBerry:
Blue: iPhone. Red: Android. Yellow: BlackBerry. Green: Windows Phone
But whether BlackBerry could carve out a niche away from the consumer space, vending its hardware and software to large clients was never a closed question. The Pentagon’s installation plan of new BlackBerry devices certainly keeps the dream alive.
Unless, of course, the Pentagon is making a poor buying decision and BlackBerry’s future remains as cloudy as widely thought.
Over the last few years, the pet care industry has proven to be relatively recession-proof. According to statistics from the American Pet Products Association, spending on pet products has continued to grow steadily, even after the global financial crisis in 2008. In 2013, spending in the U.S. hit an estimated $55.53 billion, with most of that amount, or $21.26 billion, going toward food.
The pet care market is also growing around the world and was expected to hit $96 billion in sales by the end of 2013, according to analysis firm Euromonitor.
Pet owners are willing to pamper their fur babies even if it means making financial cuts in other areas. In fact, some animals might be getting a little bit too much pampering. The Association for Pet Obesity Prevention says that an estimated 54 percent of dogs and cats in the U.S. are overweight or obese, due in large part to overfeeding.
Roly-poly animals are cute, but the extra weight can lead to long-term health problems, like diabetes, heart or kidney disease, joint conditions, and cancer. These conditions not only cause vet bills to mount up, but also reduce a pet’s quality of life and can ultimately shorten its lifespan.
Petnet wants to differentiate by creating a pet feeder that taps into the Internet of Things. The $199 SmartFeeder features “intelligent sensor technology, learning algorithms, and processing power that assesses the dietary requirements of a pet, creates a custom feeding schedule to meet those requirements, alerts pet owners when their pet has been fed and even reminds owners to purchase more food when they run low,” says the company. Demand appears to be strong so far. Petnet has already received over 10,000 pre-orders for the SmartFeeder.
The SmartFeeder joins a growing roster of pet care supplies and accessories, including Bluetooth LE-enabled pet tracker Puppy, and toys like Petcube and Egg that are all controlled by an online app.
Petnet received initial funding while participating in Bolt, a seed-stage fund and incubator in Boston for hardware startups. In addition to commercializing SmartFeeder, the company says it will use its seed round to enhance the product’s technology, hire more people, and develop other projects. Petnet CEO Carlos Hererra, who grew up in L.A., also wants Petnet to mentor high school students in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
In a statement, Dmitry Grishin, founder of Grishin Robotics, an investment company, said “Even the simplest things around us are quickly becoming robots these days. Through unique combinations of powerful hardware, smart software, and internet-connectivity, Petnet is a perfect example of this trend. I am confident in the company’s ability to successfully tackle the worldwide pet health challenge and disrupt the multi-billion dollar industry.”
According to Juniper Research, phablets are expected to hit 120 million units shipped by 2018, up from the estimated 20 million phablets shipped last year (2013).
Samsung validated the trend with the super-sized Galaxy Note series, which has gone on to be surprisingly successful for the Korean electronics giant.
The growth in the space is obvious when you look at Samsung’s numbers.
But Samsung isn’t the only company to push out giant phones. LG recently released the G Flex, with a giant, curved display, Nokia has the Lumia 1520 running Windows 8, and HTC has the One Max (to name a few).
Apple, on the other hand, doesn’t have a phablet per se. However, as phablets have grown in popularity, Apple has made slight changes to its products to accommodate these growing trends, such as the release of the iPad mini and the extension of the iPhone screen from 3.5 inches to 4-inches.
The term “phablets” rose to prominence over the past two years, connoting a tablet-smartphone hybrid. Juniper believes that the screen must be 5.6 inches to meet phablet requirements.
So we now know that phablets are here to stay. But riddle me this: Is “phablet” too popular a term to swap it out for “tablone?”
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
Petnet wants to differentiate by creating a pet feeder that taps into the Internet of Things. The $199 SmartFeeder features “intelligent sensor technology, learning algorithms, and processing power that assesses the dietary requirements of a pet, creates a custom feeding schedule to meet those requirements, alerts pet owners when their pet has been fed and even reminds owners to purchase more food when they run low,” says the company. Demand appears to be strong so far. Petnet has already received over 10,000 pre-orders for the SmartFeeder.
