Emerging voices in IoT and Ai ecosystems

6 min readJun 16, 2016

Some of the gravitational forces at work in the emerging Ai ecosystem

There has been an unprecedented amount of smart home announcement from tech giants such as Apple, Google and Amazon. What role will their voice controlled assistants play in our daily life? Will the physical products play a role in their development? How will these brands be growing their ai-business next coming 5 year?

One key way to understand the dynamic of the landscape is to ask the question: What brand would I trust to do a specific task for me?

No one brand is going to be the leader in all verticals. The datasets used to actually teach intelligence will play an important role, but so will the overarching brand logic supporting the companies core business. This kind of brand logic comes from a synergy between the company internal values and what business model that is used to monetize the value the company delivers. Some companies are destined to be more about content than individual products while others will be perceived more as technology solutions rather than pure consumer brands. Here is my first breakdown of what these digital-ai “tone of voices” might become when looking at the gravitational force of their parent brand.

Google’s assistant will find everything for you

At it’s core google is a data science company and that will nudge them into doing data driven products rather than physical lifestyle products. So far their car looks ugly and their hire of an ex-apple designer from Nest didn’t work out. Their deep learning of language however is at order of magnitude ahead of their competition. The hardware “layer” will continue to influence their strategy but they will not be a leading consumer brand because they are to deeply rooted in technology. They will continue to monetize the scale of the IoT landscape with products like analytics and ad-words for content. You will trust google home technology to find things for you and connected them. The low priced chromecast wifi-dongels is an early indication of this.

“Hey original G, if there are two people home tonight can you connect the bedroom door to bedroom speakers and spotify playlist lets’ get it on”

Facebook “M” will make you feel popular

At it’s core facebook is a network of interests. Facebook connects us with people, beliefs and increasingly our memories. Over time these captured interactions becomes stories. Stories can become movies or games and virtual reality can make you participate in these games. In that context facebook can be an interesting content provider. Mark will keep you coming back with enticing content tailored for your world view. However I doubt that it will be a successful hardware company. Instead they will most likely continue to monetize that they know what we “like” doing and that they are the best at clustering us into hobbies and personal values. I will trust them to find a person to rent my flat or to recommend an event with likeminded when I’m alone in new city. As a reflection of your best self it’s the ultimate lifestyle brand, they just don’t know it yet.

“M, I would like to find friends tonight, can you get me a design meet-up close to a gallery opening with free drinks”

Microsofts Cortana will make you productive at work

Even if Microsoft will launch an successful virtual reality platform on the Xbox it’s likely that the profits will be dwarfed by the profits on their professional products. With Office 365, Skype and soon Linked-in they will able to connect you to people that can get your work done quickly in the cloud. People and companies will easily subscribe to that for a monthly fee so monetization is “easy”. I do hope that they will nurture gaming franchise minecraft and make it into a killer augmented learning experience. But will I trust M to educate my children? Not sure… Therefore I will probably end up using their ai mostly for business purposes.

“Cortana, can you get the this app-idea sketched up and prototyped over night? You can use second degree contacts if they sign NDA. Budget 500 dollar. Text me the answer”

Amazon Alexa will get you cool stuff

Want to buy that sword you just noticed in game of thrones? Delivered today? No problem! Amazon has starting building their own delivery network where companies like UPS can’t support them at peaks so their delivery time is likely to be the fastest possible. Their monetization is becoming an interesting flywheel between content and related consumption: We will want to buy the mouth watering Prime-branded ingredients from a cooking show that Amazon Prime produced. Fast moving consumer goods is currently a more likely business success than smart technology hardware products (outside their echo speaker and kindle e-reader). However Amazon Web Services Business is doing extremely well so they might credibly launch products that needs high internet speed and online processing with no glitches (like online VR). Until then I will use Amazon to get me cool stuff at a good price. I trust them to be an extension of open market capitalism.

“Alexa, get me that sword, it’s ok to buy used”

Apple Siri will get you a premium experience

The internet of things can be so messy. Apple is about keeping superior ease-of-use and secure seamless integration by keeping your options limited. But the number if connected products in the home is inherently complex. Apple is now changing it strategy by opening up Siri and HomeKit, but they are still perceived as complicated to work with on hardware (what happened with airplay?). Monetization is through app-store and their own hw-sales so it’s not entirely clear how they will make money on other brands smart products. But it’s early days so the key question is still if they will get a critical mass supporting HomeKit. For now I will use Siri to do things on my Iphone, like setting an alarm clock. The phone or watch is in many cases a great remote control for the smart home so in the future I expect it to be connected to premium set of smart home products.

“Siri make me a two dollar coffee please”

Samsung Viv will give you quality tech

Even if Samsung are huge in TV’s and Smart phones they are not an easy read in terms of strategic directions for Ai. Mostly because their largest indication so far is their purchase of Smart Things. The acquisition of Smart Things have lead to a somewhat fragmented user experience but it means that they are in the race, collecting data and learning. Additional software services are likely to happen. I think that an ai-assistant startup like Viv (from the makers of Siri that was bought by Apple) will become the official Ai voice after an high valuation acquisition. With a big range of connected appliances it’s likely they will become a staple brand for technology products that works well. Monetization might change from low margin sales to higher margin rent of a complete updated set-up. I will trust Viv to turn of of the TV, record the game and make my laundry ready for tomorrow.

“Viv, record the game tonight and send file to laptop, turn on laundry system when I have fallen asleep”

Tesla will drive me and Beidu will work in China

There are some Ai-plays that are not played out yet. The OpenAi initiative by Teslas Elon Musk will likely have some role in the growing autonomous vehicle industry. We also have a number of large Chinese telecom players with the muscles and data-sets to create a unique Ai-voices. Just to name a few we have the search engine Beidu, the Alipay payment platform, the WeChat messaging (from Tencent), the Huawei low priced smartphones and the Xiaomi direct-to-consumer-sales of an ecosystem of smart products including segways. Finally we have the creative gaming industry with platform like Valve’s Steam running HTC VR, Sony Playstation and hopefully Japans Nintendo. The race is on and I cant wait to see who I will enjoy talking to the most. It still might turn out it’s actually an Indian call center.

“Overwatch, find a Scandinavian Star Wars player ranked over 50 that likes Hip Hop”