UNIFIED DEVICES

Khaled Erksoussi
Aug 24, 2017 · 4 min read

In today’s world of tremendous use of technology and digital devices, what began few years ago as a tend to use PDAs and smart phones has evolved now into the use of multiple devices, the average user now has a smart phone, a tablet, a laptop and sometimes a desktop not to mention the wearables. According to Global Web Index the average digital user owns 3.64 devices (Buckle, 2016).

The use of multiple devices came from convenience and different end-user experience when using those devices and that is due to the different user interface each device offers to the end-user. What began as a smart phone evolved into a tab just because of the bigger screen. Other users could not give away the use of laptops because of the physical interfaces available in laptops such as the physical keyboard, touchpad and IO interfaces like USB ports and others. Even the market of desktops still rather alive because of other input devices available in the desktop such as the mouse, the full-size keyboard, the bigger screen, and sometimes the price.

But at the end the user has one set of eyes, he can only use one of those devices at the same time specially that with the advancement in processing power leaving no real difference between them.

Users, in order to overcome the spread of their files over multiple devices and to have their files accessible through all devices went into the use of the Cloud as a tool to unify the storage and be able to access documents and media regardless which device they use. Companies and solution providers also started to introduce services such as “hand-off” by Apple for example to let the user carry on the work being done on one device to the other.

The challenge

According to Internet World Stats (Miniwatts Marketing Group, 2017) only 51% of the world population enjoy access to internet,

this means that 3,683,530,696 people are without access to the famous WWW and its services including Cloud services, and therefore cannot enjoy the same experience of users in north America for example, not to mention that even among the 51% connected users there is a great variations among them in the bandwidth available for them to utilize and that leads to limitations in using the Cloud to store multimedia files such as photos, movies and music. Even for the tier one connected world, is cloud data accessible in times of disasters and big emergencies? And what if we need to get some crucial information in places with no connectivity? The other concern is the security and privacy dilemma. In basic marketing, it is known that when you don’t pay for the product then you are the product and users have the right to wonder and be skeptical about what’s in it for companies like google for instance which provides Cloud storage not even associated to its products. Legitimate question come into user’s minds about who owns this Cloud data? Is this data searchable? Etc. this solution ignored two limitations in the real-world users are suffering from, the security aspect and the connectivity aspect.

The Solution

The solution is in fact simple and can be introduced to the market using today’s technology. Building a hand-held smart device with Tera level storage that hold all user data in one place so the user can use his data whenever and where ever he goes. When the user goes to office, he can simply plug his device in his work docking station, carry on his tasks, take his device out when he goes home, dock it again in the home station or a tab sized sleeve for bigger screen experience or even plug into the home TV for a family movie night. Those other docking stations will only provide interfacing like display, ports, power or they can provide real processing and extra graphics capabilities for special applications and use. They will only include storage to backup the handheld device.

A product line like what is described above certainly has unique selling advantages of being in control, privacy aspects and the verity of support products, docks, sleeves that should be open for others to innovate into its design and create special purposes sleeves for different uses and tastes.

Bibliography

Buckle, C. (2016, Feburary 18). Digital consumers own 3.64 connected devices. Retrieved August 24, 2017, from Global Web Index: http://blog.globalwebindex.net/chart-of-the-day/digital-consumers-own-3-64-connected-devices/

Miniwatts Marketing Group. (2017, June 30). INTERNET USAGE STATISTICS. Retrieved August 24, 2017, from Internet World Stats: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

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