In the begining of this year I wrote posting Electronics trends for 2014 that includes my expectations for this year. As year 2014 ends in few weeks, it is a good idea to look back how well those estimations went. I use italics for material from the original Electronics trends for 2014 posting.
The Internet of Everything is coming. The Internet is expanding into enterprise assets and consumer items such as cars and televisions. Very many electronics devices needs to be designed for this in mind.
Internet of Things is the hottest topic for everybody working in embedded systems and mobile communications field. IoT has become to spotlight this year. It is in so much spotlight that I have created an IoT category for articles on IoT topics to thos blog.
The Internet of Things (IoT) will evolve into the Web of Things, increasing the coordination between things in the real world and their counterparts on the Web. Gartner suggests that the “the smart machine era will be the most disruptive in the history of IT.”
The Internet of Things is here now very hot. Everybody are working to get it to work. It has not matured yet. I think it will take few years until the concept will grow to Web of Things or otger higher level concepts. Disruptive time are going on just now.
Software-defined anything (SDx) is coming more into use. It means that many proprietary systems are being replaced with commonly available standard computer hardware and software running in them.
This is very much happening. Standard PC hardware running Linux or Windows is replacing proprietary boxes in very many applications. There are very many small computing platforms that you can buy (in board and oxed formats) that you can buy and run your software in them. In the smaller platforms the most common components are some ARM processor core and Linux operating system in it. And if you need to make something special, Dev Kit Should Be Your Design’s Starting Point, so you can make your first test versions quickly using dev boards, and later if you see big enough market you can design your own optimized version of the board,
PC market: ABANDON HOPE all ye who enter here. Vendor consolidation ‘inevitable’.
PC maket has been in very bad situation on this post-PC era where smart phones and tablets are the “hot” devices and PCs seem to be old-fashioned. Microoft Windows 8 also played it’s part. It seems that PC market finally in the end of the years saw some light or at least slowing of market drop. It seems that the PC market will not see the “crazy years” anymore, but it is not fading out quickly either. The Q3 PC numbers were better than expected, but not great. According to market research firms Gartner and IDC worldwide PC shipments fell 0.5% and 1.7%, respectively. The top five personal computer makers got bigger in the third quarter at the expense of smaller PC makers, which are losing share in a consolidating market. The top five vendors shipped more than 52 million PCs in Q3 and accounted for two-thirds of the market, and their PC shipments rose 9% year over year last quarter. Apple moved into the number 5 position on a worldwide basis, slightly overtaking ASUS. Some smaller vendors have already scaled back or have withdrawn from the PC business: Sony, Samsung and Toshiba. Shift is clearly to mobile: The world’s largest PC maker, Lenovo, now sells more smartphones than PCs.
Maker movement has made a renaissance on the making things yourself. It seems that hobby electronics is not duying, it is going very well at the moment. There are maker events, hacker spaces opened, lots of interesting platform available that allow you to make interesting things easily and there seems to be even interest in new hardware start-ups. There is lots of free material and courses available on very many topics.
3D printing is real and here now. It is quickly entering from hype to mainstream in companies that develop new things.
E-Waste: Lack of Info Plagues Efforts to Reduce E-Waste article tells that creation of trade codes is necessary to track used electronics products according to a recent study concerning the waste from growing quantities of used electronics devices—including TVs, mobile phones and computers. There will be aims to reduce the waste, for example project like standardizing mobile phone chargers and laptop power supplies.
E-waste is a serious problem. I don’t recall any signficant changes in that during 2o14. Things have advanced a little. Withing last few years the US EPA and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) have come up with rules and regulations to encourage the reuse and recycling of e-waste in the US. In all the states of the US, except California, a producer responsibility approach is brought in by the US Government, while the electronic product manufacturer needs to pay only for recycling processes. Around 24 states in the US have passed mandatory legislations for e-waste management and recycling. There are projects Combating illegal e-waste in developing countries. In Europe the WEEE Forum has actively for more than 10 years (WEEE Directive introduced in 2002) acquired substantial know-how on the technical aspects of collection, logistics and processing of WEEE. In 2012, the members collectively reported collection of about 2 million tonnes of WEEE.
There was one special thing that happened during the year that I did not anticipate in my posting for this year: 2014 is the year that “faceless” test instruments migrated in earnest from the production floor to the test bench or even to the engineer’s office. In particular, RF test equipment in the form of spectrum analyzers and signal analyzers. Now normal computers are able to do a good job of handling this high performance computing task that earlier needed special hardware, there is no turning back. Faceless instruments are often smaller than traditional instruments with front-panel controls. Engineers have a need for increased data display, analysis, storage, and sharing capabilities as they deal with ever-increasing complexity in their designs and DUTs. In addition, the evolution of computer technology (e.g., processing power, display size, storage, etc.) allows faceless instrument performance to scale at a rate close to that of Moore’s Law. For example in the world of software defined radio you can do amazing thing with some software and cheap hardware.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Top 2014 Acquisitions that Advanced the Internet of Things
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324935&
It’s undeniable: 2014 was the year when the electronics industry decidedly and collectively moved forward to push the Internet of Things (IoT).
For evidence, look no further than the myriad mergers and acquisitions among chip vendors, system companies, and software vendors this year — many in the IoT space. Beyond the usual reasons for consolidation (economy of scale, eliminating competition, expanding revenue), many companies scrambled to make deals specifically to get IoT technologies and products that were missing from their portfolios.
Google’s acquisition of Nest Labs in January 2014
Among M&A deals consummated in 2014 were Samsung’s picking up SmartThings, Facebook buying Oculus, a VR technology company, and Intel acquiring Basis Science, a smartwatch startup. At first look, these seem unrelated. But tie the common threads of IoT and wearables together, and an unstoppable market movement emerges.
Accordingly, many other chip vendors and sensor algorithm companies also jumped on the IoT bandwagon, in hopes of laying the groundwork for more useful and cost-effective IoT devices.
Sensors, MCUs, and wireless connectivity are three obvious building blocks for IoT end-node devices. Tony Massimini, chief of technology at Semico Research, adds to the list “power management, algorithm (sensor fusion), and embedded security,” driving the IoT market.
Among these prerequisites, “wireless connectivity and software (algorithms)” are the two most sought-after technologies, Massimini observes. Indeed, many M&As in 2014 have been built around those two. Expect more in 2015.
Cooley described sensor algorithms as an “IP minefield” where vendors need to look for the right partners.
Under threat
Massimini, while forecasting the number of connected devices to reach 36 billion units by 2020, cautions that “all of this new market opportunity is under threat.”
It’s because “at each point in the IoT there are vulnerabilities to malicious attacks and interception of vital information,” he says. Noting the importance of security for IoT, Massimini asks: “How valuable is the data and/or the process that must be protected? What are the consequences of not having security?” While no specific M&A moves in 2014 answered those questions, they are likely to dog the IoT industry for years to come.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Top 10 Industrial Control DesignLine Stories in 2014
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325019&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ben Thompson / stratechery:
Wearables, Bitcoin or messaging may underpin the next consumer computing epoch, after the PC, internet, and mobile
The State of Consumer Technology at the End of 2014
http://stratechery.com/2014/state-consumer-technology-end-2014/
While the modern computing era in many respects began with the IBM System/360 mainframe and further expanded with the minicomputer, normal consumers didn’t start encountering computers until the personal computer. And, while mainframes are technically still around (while minicomputers are decidedly not), what is unique about the PC is that it is very much still a part of modern life.
In fact, one of the defining characteristics of the three major epochs of consumer computing – PC, Internet, and mobile – is that they have been largely complementary: we didn’t so much replace one form of computing for another insomuch as we added forms on top of each other.
Every epoch has had four distinct arenas of competition that emerge in order:
The core technology
The operating system (i.e. the means by which the core technology is harnessed)
The killer use case for:
Work/Productivity
Communication
Certainly computers can be used for more than work/productivity or communication, but those two use cases are universal and lead to the biggest winners and most important companies.
Epoch One: The PC
The PC epoch began on August 12, 1981. That is the day the IBM Personal Computer was released with an Intel 8088 processor running Microsoft DOS 1.0.
Epoch Two: The Internet
The Internet epoch began 14 years after the PC epoch, nearly to the day, with the Netscape IPO on August 9, 1995. The core pieces of the Internet had been around for years, and the World Wide Web was developed by Tim Berners-Lee and formally announced in August 1991 (clearly August is an auspicious month), but it was the “Netscape Moment” that woke everyone up to the possibilities of the Internet.
Epoch Three: Mobile
I would like to choose Google’s acquisition of Android as the beginning of the mobile epoch, just because it happened in August (2005, in this case), but the date that matters is January 9, 2007, when Steve Jobs announced Apple’s iPhone. The core technology was the smartphone; while Nokia, Palm and Blackberry had been building precursors, it was the iPhone with its multitouch screen, unfettered Internet access, and (eventual) App Store that defined the category.
The Mobile Work/Productivity Space
If the PC epoch was about being omnipotent – computers can do everything, better! – and the Internet epoch about being omniscient – with Google, you can know everything – mobile is about being omnipresent. By virtue of being, well, mobile, smartphones extend computing to every aspect of our daily lives. That is why the killer applications and dominant companies in the mobile work/productivity space will be defined by how they bridge the online and offline worlds.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The State of Consumer Technology at the End of 2014
http://stratechery.com/2014/state-consumer-technology-end-2014/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Top 10 Industrial Control DesignLine Stories in 2014
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325019&
Reflecting back on the year nearly ended, here is a compilation of the top attention-getting articles in the Industrial Control DesignLine. Each of these top 10 articles received more than 10,000 page views, testifying to their immense popularity.
Top Robot Stories of 2014
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325036&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Top consumer electronics design articles of 2014
http://www.edn.com/design/consumer/4437995/Top-consumer-electronics-design-articles-of-2014
Tomi Engdahl says:
Memory Design Trends in 2014
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325045&
If there is one enduring trend for memory design in 2014 that will carry through to next year, it’s the continued demand for higher performance.
“The trend toward high performance is never going away, and research and engineering will always be focused on trying to keep up,” Lou Ternullo, product marketing director of memory and storage IP at Cadence, tells us. At the same time, the goal is to keep costs down, especially when it comes to consumer applications using DDR4 and mobile devices using LPDDR4. “Consumer applications are particularly sensitive to cost,” he says.
Ternullo believes LPDDR4 will gain a strong foothold in 2015, and not just to address mobile computing demands. Other applications that require lower cost, lower power consumption, and higher performance will benefit from LPDDR4, such as HDTVs, cameras, and other display devices — and designers will need to adapt to the demand.
But while Ternullo is bullish on LPDDR4, the reality is that LPDRR3, or even DDR3 for that matter, will be around for the foreseeable future. He notes that customers want to hedge their bets with entire subsystems that will use the lowest-cost DRAM, whatever that may be, so they are looking for subsystems that can easily accommodate DDR3 in the immediate future, but will also be able to support DDR4 when it becomes cost-effective or makes more sense.