Jim Harris

Download PDF Firms Focused On Digital Transformation, Mobile First & AI Centric Strategies Experiencing Explosive Growth By Jim Harris The Coronavirus has wreaked havoc on the global economy. COVID-19 is hyper-charging the growth of companies that have aggressively pursued digital transformation, by putting mobile first philosophy at the core of their business strategy and embedding artificial intelligence (AI) in all their products, services and business models. Zoom Zoom Zoom Zoom had 10 million daily users in December 2019 and in April 2020 that had exploded to 300 million daily participants. How many companies can boast at 30X growth in customer count during the pandemic? COVID Consequences Many companies prevented people from working from home pre-pandemic. All that has changed. Companies and boomer executives are discovering that people can be productive working from home. Post pandemic not everyone is going to want work in the office. Dell Computer in Austin, Texas expects that half of its 160,000 employees will never work from its offices going forward. About 40% of the average large company’s employees could work from home. I predict that companies will, on average, allow people to work two or three days from home. Firms will realize that they can cut the square footage of their corporate office space by 40% and drive millions of dollars directly to the bottom line. This is bad news for corporate real estate companies and property … [Read more...] about COVID Crisis Accelerating Three Trends

Download PDF The hottest topic at CES, in my opinion, was artificial intelligence (AI). AI chips will add intelligence into billions of smart devices in the coming years. These devices will be at the edge — meaning that they’ll work without having to be connected to the cloud or a data center. Syntiant won a CES 2020 Best of Innovation Award for its NDP100 Processor. It is the frst chip to put machine learning processing into almost any consumer device. The chip only draws 150 microwatts of power and is so tiny it can be embedded in a hearing aid. What’s the benefit? At a noisy party, the AI chip can distinguish which voices are in conversation with the hearing aid wearer and amplify them while quietening the background noise. We know about CPUs (central processing unit) from PCs, and GPUs (graphics processing units) from graphics, gaming and now blockchain applications and crypto mining. Now we are going to see a dramatic rise of NPUs — neural processing units. Syntiant's NDP100 is one of these. Duncan Stewart is director of research at Deloitte for TMT (Technology, Media and Telecommunications). At Deloitte’s TMT Predictions 2020, Duncan predicted that AI chips at the edge are poised for explosive growth. In 2020 a staggering 750 million AI edge chips will be sold and that will more than double to 1.6 billion by 2024. More than 60% of these — a billion chips — will be embedded in our smartphones making them even more intelligent. AI chips are already … [Read more...] about Artificial Intelligence: A Hot Topic at CES 2020

Gas Cars are Dead: Here’s Why Traditional car companies are zombies. They’re dead but they just don’t know it yet. By 2022, Electric Vehicles (EVs) will become cheaper to buy than gas cars. EVs are already cheaper on operating cost and maintenance cost. The electricity to power EVs costs 80% less than the gas to power a traditional car and electric car maintenance costs are 80% lower. A typical gas powered car has 2,000 moving parts, while an EV has 20. With thousands of fewer parts and no oil changes, there’s very little maintenance required for EVs. The largest cost of an EV has historically been the battery but battery prices are plummeting, having fallen by more than 90% since 2010, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF): Plummeting Prices for EV Batteries Source BNEF In 2017 BNEF predicted that by 2026 EVs would be cheaper to buy than the average gas car in North America: Source: BNEF But battery prices have been falling so fast, that BNEF now predicts that cross over will happen in 2022. Catherine Wood, CEO of New York based investment manager ARK, predicts the cross over will happen in 2021, and that by 2025 inexpensive electric vehicles in the US will be up to $11,000 cheaper compared to a gas powered Toyota Camry. Why is this important? Who is going to buy a traditional gas car when an EV is cheaper to buy, cheaper to run and cheaper to maintain? Rise of Mobility as a Service (MaaS) Using Uber or Lyft is already cheaper … [Read more...] about Zombie Car Companies

Live Reporting From Mobile World Congress, Feb 25-28 in Barcelona, Spain TORONTO, Feb. 22, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- International bestselling author and social media influencer Jim Harris will be covering Mobile World Congress (MWC) live from Monday, February 25 to Thursday, February 28, 2019, in Barcelona Spain. International bestselling author and social media influencer Jim Harris will be covering Mobile World Congress (MWC) live from Monday February 25 to Thursday February 28, 2019 in Barcelona Spain. Here is a taste of Jim Harris speaking on Disruptive Innovation at Idea City, Canada's version of TED Talks. Mobile World Congress is the largest and most important mobile tech trade show globally. With 110,000+ attendees; 7,700 CEOs; thousands of international journalists and 2,400 exhibitors from more than 200 countries will be participating, MWC is where the industry's most important mobile products are launched and innovations revealed. Disruptive Innovation: 2019 Smartphones are eating the consumer tech world. A staggering 59% of all global consumer tech spending was on smartphones in 2018. Smartphones Are The World's Computing Device Of Choice Globally we spend more time online using mobiles than computers More searches are performed by mobile than computers Android, not Windows, is the dominant operating system globally 5G Revolution The 5G revolution will be the most discussed topic at MWC. The very first 5G smartphones will be … [Read more...] about Smartphones are Eating the Consumer Tech World – 59% of 2018 Global Consumer Tech Spending Spent on Smartphones

Live Reporting on Innovation from the Consumer Electronics Show TORONTO, Jan. 2, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- International bestselling author and social media influencer Jim Harris will be covering CES live from Las Vegas, during the Media Days on January 5 and 6, and throughout the show January 7-10. CES is the world's largest electronics show, with 175,000 attendees (61,000 from countries outside the US). More than 7,000 international journalists attend and cover the event which has 4,400+ exhibitors taking up 2.9 million square feet show space (equal to 50 football fields). CES is the industry's most important event where new products are launched and innovations revealed. Top Tech Trends 2020 Artificial intelligence, 5G and NextGen TV will be three of the top tech trends at the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show (CES). The top tech trends will be: Artificial Intelligence in Everything Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be embedded in everything. Between 2020 and 2024 the sale of AI chips is predicted to grow by 20% a year, twice as fast as the overall semi conductor industry (9%), according to Deloitte TMT prediction. By 2024 AI chips sales will exceed 1.5 billion globally. Smartphones will account for more than 70% of all AI chips in edge devices. In 2019 my $1,000 smartphone had more raw computing power that IBM's Deep Blue super computer of 1997 that cost $100 million. Within 8 years the new smartphone that I buy will be 250 times more powerful than my … [Read more...] about AI, 5G and NextGen TV Named 2020 Top Tech Trends

Download PDF Smart homes are expected to grow to a $4.5 billion market in 2019 in the U.S., according to CTA. That a 16% growth rate over 2018 making it a very hot market. The Intelligence of Things The “Internet of Things” (IoT) is shifting to the “Intelligence of Things” – as artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly embedded in the smart devices in our homes. For instance, Google’s new Nest Hello is a video doorbell that pulses in color and records who comes to your door. It also includes face recognition. When the doorbell is pushed, it notifies your phone allowing you to talk to the person whether you are at home or not. Once you identify your FedEx courier, when he comes to the door, it will recognize him. Flo by Moen is another example. It’s an IoT device installed on the water main coming into your house. Flo can detect a leak as little as one drop per minute so rather than a slow leak running inside your drywall and resulting in black mold, you are notified before it is a problem. And if a water pipe bursts, it will turn off the water main and alert you. For the insurance industry, water damage is the leading cause of preventable claims. Some insurance companies now give homeowners a discount on their premiums in return for having this device installed. Flo also was a CES 2018 Innovation Award Honoree. Smart Home Hub “Digital assistants have helped to grow the smart home market,” says CTA’s Steve Koenig, “because they’ve reduced the … [Read more...] about Smart Home Evolution

Download PDF Sales of OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) TVs grew 60% in 2018 in the U.S. and are set to roughly do so again in 2019. “OLED to many consumers is still a very new technology,” says John Taylor, senior vice president at LG Electronics USA. OLED technology was originally invented by Kodak scientists in 1987. The technology was first introduced in televisions in 2008. “We’re now in the 5th generation OLED,” notes Taylor. OLED has many advantages over today’s dominant LCD technology. Comparison to LCD LCD TVs have three layers: backlighting, then the pixels and then a layer of shutters. The backlighting layer is on continuously and it illuminates the pixels in the second layer. When the image called for is black, the third layer of shutters come into play and shut. But some light will still seep through. Because there are three layers LCD TVs are thicker and heavier than OLEDs. Superior Picture Quality By contrast, OLED allows each individual pixel to be turned on and of. So, in a 4K TV that means all 8.1 million pixels can instantly be turned on or of. As a result, the blacks are blacker in an OLED TV because there is literally no light. It also means that the contrast is sharper and colors are brighter. Ultra Thin and Lightweight With only one layer, OLED panels are not only lighter, but ultra thin. At CES 2019, LG showed of its “Wallpaper” OLED TV that is only 2.57 mm thick (one tenth of an inch). In 2019 LG will be releasing a … [Read more...] about OLED TVs Hit Prime Time

Download PDF EVs set to upset traditional car companies in 2020 Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) predicts that by 2025, electric vehicles (EVs) will be cheaper than gas powered autos (known as internal combustion engines). The blue line in the chart below represents the average price of gas-powered cars which is predicted to slowly increase going forward. By comparison, the average price of the least expensive EVs has been falling substantially. The largest cost for electric vehicles historically has been the price of batteries. But because manufacturers are exponentially improving price performance in battery technology both in chemistry and density storage, the price of EVs is falling. The cost of battery technology has plummeted from $1,000 kilowatts per hour in 2010 to $209 in 2017. In 2025, BNEF predicts that battery technology will hit the critical point of $100 per kWh where EVs will become cheaper than gas cars. However, at the Tesla shareholders meeting in June 2018, Elon Musk predicted that Tesla and Panasonic would achieve $100/kWh at the battery cell level by the end of 2018 and at the battery pack level by 2020.That means EVs would become cheaper than gas powered cars in 2020 — a full five years before BNEF projects. The implications of this are profound. For example, look at Tesla’s Model 3 sales in September 2018. The Tesla Model 3 became the fourth bestselling car in the U.S. The other top cars all saw significant declines in sales volumes. … [Read more...] about Electric Cars: A Disruptive Model

Download PDF Google recently unveiled Duplex, an artificial intelligence (AI) assistant at its developer conference. As your personal assistant, Duplex can call to book a hair appointment or make a restaurant reservation. The people on the other end of the phone won’t even realize that they’re talking to an AI. Duplex uses AI, machine learning, cloud computing and bandwidth — all of which are exponentially improving technologies that also enable real-time translation. The Era of Real-Time Translation Universal real-time translation has always fascinated humanity thanks to its use in fictional stories like Star Trek and Douglas Adam’s Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (with the Babel fish). But it’s no longer science fiction. At CES 2018, I tested several hardware devices offering real-time translation including the Mars earbuds, which was a CES 2018 Best of Innovation Honoree in the headphones category. Mars’ promo video shows a date with people communicating in two languages. Other companies with translating earbuds include Waverly Labs Pilot, Mymanu Clik+, Google Pixel Buds, Bragi Dash Pro, while Ili and the Travis Translator are handheld devices. With Google Translate you can now use your smartphone and an internet connection to perform two-way, real-time translation from English into 32 languages without spending hundreds of dollars on hardware. But if you’re sitting in an auditorium listening to a speaker in a foreign language, having translation earbuds is … [Read more...] about AI Enables Real-Time Translation

Download PDF More data has been created in the last two years than in all of human history combined. Companies are awash in data, but how can you derive strategic advantage from it? That’s where artificial intelligence (AI) comes in. Google, Facebook, Amazon and Uber are data-driven companies. AI is central to their business models, top line revenue and profitability. Google looks at the sites you visit, what you discuss in Gmail and predicts which ads would best serve you. Facebook knows your interests, your network of friends and predicts which ads you are likely to click on. Amazon knows your purchasing history and predicts what you want to buy next. Uber and Lyft know customers’ travel patterns and predict the number of drivers needed to meet anticipated demand. AI Knows What You Want As AI’s predictive power improves, it will transform industries and business models. Imagine that Amazon’s AI gets so accurate that it knows what you intend to order before you’ve ordered it – and preemptively ships it to you. If you choose to keep it, you get a discount or you can return it at no cost. Sound crazy? This is Stitch Fix’s model. Customers pay $20 for a personal shopper who reviews your Facebook feed and photos and then predicts which clothes you are likely to wear. Five items are shipped and if you keep all of them, you get a 25 percent discount. Stitch Fix was founded in 2011, but is already changing online fashion retailing. Today, it is worth more than $2 … [Read more...] about AI, How it will Transform Business Models