• Speakers Driving Smart Home Devices Market To 244 Million
    The smart home devices market is on a tear. Driven by smart speakers, the number of smart home devices is projected to grow 42% a year for the next five years. The number of smart home devices will grow from 42 million this year to 244 million within five years, according to the new smart home devices forecast by Forrester.
  • Connected Devices Projected To Reach 20 Billion This Year; PC Takes A Back Seat
    When it comes to the number of connected devices, the counts are consistently into the billions. One forecast not long ago pegged the number of connected devices this year already at 12 billion. That projection, by Frost & Sullivan, said the number of connected devices would grow to more than 45 billion by 2023, at an annual growth rate of 20%.
  • Augmented Reality Set To Overtake VR
    Money has been flowing into virtual reality and augmented reality, with the latter now catching the eye of investors. In the last 12 months, $1.8 billion was invested in AR and VR, according to the latest tracking numbers from Digi-Capital. However, the last quarter marked the start of a transition from VR-driven investments to the new mobile AR market
  • AI Drives Revenue In Product Innovation, Customer Service
    The adoption of artificial intelligence is well underway but many execs expect some roadblocks ahead. There's a lot of enthusiasm and optimism for AI, most notably as a potential competitive advantage. For example, after deploying AI for various online advertising function, lingerie retailer Cosabella learned plenty of lessons and adapted and modified from there. Any business that doesn't start using AI in at least some area will be missing that learning and find themselves behind.
  • Businesses Buy Into AI, Budgets Follow
    Artificial intelligence may mean different things to different people, but that isn't stopping some businesses from moving full steam ahead with it. AI has become somewhat of an umbrella term covering a range of technologies, including natural language processing, machine learning, computer vision and deep learning, among others. Intelligent assistants like Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana and Google's Home all are viewed as using AI, to one degree or another.
  • Smart Store Technologies To Drive $78 Billion In Transaction Revenue
    Smart technology to get shoppers out of stores more quickly is coming. However, it's coming less like a freight train and more like a glacier. Smart checkout can comprise different techniques, such as totally checkout-less shopping, cashier-based automatic payment and automatic item scanning and bagging, according to a new study by Juniper Research.
  • Voice, Visual Searching Seen Driving Online Commerce
    Prediction for the next year and beyond are starting to come out, in addition to the numerous research forecasts of various IoT-related devices to be shipped and bought. One of the recent set of predictions highlighted a distinct focus on artificial intelligence. Differing levels of AI have been popping up in the marketplace for some time, most notably at the last CES show in Las Vegas where Amazon Alexa linkages were announced at almost every turn.
  • Virtual Reality Advertising Tested: Pre-Roll Wins
    While advertising in virtual reality is hardly a mass market reality, some new insights are indicating that there are some ways of doing it better than others. In a test of ads inside a virtual reality game, researcher found that some formats were more effective than others. Biometric measurements were taken from a sample of three ad formats seen by a panel of 54 U.S. adults.
  • Samsung Leads Developer Conference With Voice Assistant Bixby 2.0
    Samsung is taking another shot at AI. When the company's latest smartphone, the Galaxy S8, was introduced several months back, Samsung's voice assistant Bixby didn't come with it. At the Samsung Developer Conference in San Francisco this week, a vision for the connected home featured Bixby 2.0, now to be included with devices including Samsung's Smart TV and Family Hub refrigerator. The company also rebranded its SmartThings, Samsung Connect and ARTIK into one IoT platform, now called SmartThings Cloud. The approach is to connect and control IoT-enabled products from one main hub, which makes sense since Samsung some time ago …
  • Children Tell Parents To Disconnect, Ditch Phones At Dinner
    One of the issues with connected devices is that they're generally always on. Thanks to home networks, the central hub for television, streaming movies, phones and smart home devices, everyone in the home also is connected. However, being connected during meals at home is seen as an issue, with almost all (98%) parents saying that disconnecting from devices during meals is essential to improving their family's bond.
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