The Death of Europe’s Last Electronics Giant

It’s not only Philips that has bitten the dust, there’s been a succession of other large Western electronic companies that have either gone out of business or that are now only a shadow of their former selves.

Read more what happened from those links:

Case Analysis ” How Philips Nearly Went Bankrupt” – SlideShare
https://www.slideshare.net/kbony/case-analysis-how-philips-nearly-went-bankrupt

How Europe’s Last Electronics Giant Collapsed: The Death of Philips & The Incredible Legacy of the Company
https://techthelead.com/how-europes-last-electronics-giant-collapsed-the-death-of-philips-the-incredible-legacy-of-the-company/

FDA says faulty Philips device reports accelerating as CEO departs
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/fda-says-faulty-philips-device-reports-accelerating-ceo-departs-2022-08-17/
Philips recalls 1,200 reworked sleep apnea devices over fault that can cause therapy failure
https://www.medtechdive.com/news/philips-recall-sleep-apnea-serial-number-PHG/647169/

Predictions 2021: Technology diversity drives IoT growth
Enterprises, consumers, and different stakeholders will continue to drive demand for new internet-of-things (IoT) applications, technologies, and solutions in 2021 across verticals and geographies.

Here are Forrester’s five major IoT predictions for 2021.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/predictions-2021-technology-diversity-drives-iot-growth/

Many analysts have lately been asserting that AI-enabled technologies will dramatically increase economic output. Accenture claims that by 2035 AI will double growth rates for 12 developed countries and increase labor productivity by as much as a third. PwC claims that AI will add $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030, while McKinsey projects a $13 trillion boost by that time.

If true, they create a powerful incentive for companies to pursue AI. But are these predictions really valid?

It seems that there is more hype than reality in many AI claims. It seems that many of McKinsey’s estimates were just made up by extrapolating from bold claims made by various startups.

This article investigates how well many hyped AI startups are really doing. It seems that many are not nowhere nearly as valuable to society as all the hype would suggest.

So will AI bring those hyped substantial economic gains?

It seems that the answer is not. After reading this data it’s very hard for me to feel confident that any of the AI startups examined will provide the expected boost over the next decade. Similar pessimism is also starting to emerge from normally cheery business publications.

The most promising areas for rapid gains in productivity are likely to be found in robotic process automation for white-collar workers, continuing a trend that has existed for decades with gradual improvements.

Be a realist: Expect Evolution Not Revolution (EENR)

There are many companies that make up some bogus pseudo scientific claims to sell products. This article gives an example about a company selling expensive stickers as solution for people afraid of the irrational “dangers of electromagnetic radiation”.

The article lists the hallmarks of pseudo-scientific products for you to become a more savvy consumer. If you can’t find any empirical information yourself, do your own tests!

FTC hits Equifax with fine of up to $700M for 2017 data breach
https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/22/equifax-fine-ftc/?tpcc=ECFB2019

Marriott to face $123 million fine by UK authorities over data breach
https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/09/marriott-data-breach-uk-fine/

UK’s ICO fines British Airways a record £183M over GDPR breach that leaked data from 500,000 users
https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/08/uks-ico-fines-british-airways-a-record-183m-over-gdpr-breach-that-leaked-data-from-500000-users/

“The simple act of using Facebook, Snyder claimed, negated any user’s expectation of privacy. An outside party can’t violate what you yourself destroyed, Snyder seemed to suggest.”

IN COURT, FACEBOOK BLAMES USERS FOR DESTROYING THEIR OWN RIGHT TO PRIVACY
https://theintercept.com/2019/06/14/facebook-privacy-policy-court/

Pilgrim Beart (CEO / DevicePilot Ltd.) gave keynote speech “The seven habits of highly effective IoT companies”. According to him, traditional control and monitoring is the first step of IoT, which should be developed to optimize the efficiency of companies through IoT. IoT will not be a mature market for a long time, so it is best to develop the related business through partnerships and collaborative models.

Every start-up IoT company should consider how security and upgradeability will be implemented right from the start. IoT’s business should be seen as a revenue-generating service business instead of a one-time hardware selling transaction.

According to Pilgrim Beart, 5G will change some IoT applications, but many IoT applications do not need new 5G features, but need more extensive data coverage than the 5G network can provide for a long time. The use of blockchain technologies in IoT applications is also challenging due to their typically very high energy consumption, but in some rare applications their use makes sense.

I can agree with those views pretty well. I think that at least at the short term both 5G and blockchain technologies seem to be over-hyped. There are some special applications for which those fit well and are absolutely needed, but large majority of IoT applications at the moment and in near future do not need to use them.

Aloke Barua (Microchip) presentation “IOT – Mapping the Value Beyond the Hype” gave presentation “IOT – Mapping the Value Beyond the Hype” that contained both business value slides and some technical details. The interesting parts were the data on estimated business value what different IoT applications bring.

IoT security is now very important and will be more important in the future because almost everybody seem to want their IoT devices to be safe.

Second inspirational keynote was “Accelerating IoT with AI at the Edge” by Eddie Seymour (European Technical Director, NVIDIA). Eddie Saymour spoke on NVIDIA’s view on the application of AI technologies to IoT (thus becoming AIoT). According to Eddie Saymour, AI is a new industrial revolution. For its successful exploitation, we need open minds and creative, unusual thinking. A start-up company using AI technology needs to find a unique challenging function that can be solved with AI to succeed.The presentation had huge number of examples where NVIDIA AI has been used in in real life applications by small and big companies.

In this picture keynote speaker Eddie Saymour holds a handy $99 NVIDIA Jetson NANO AI card computer in his hand. He says some people already call it “Raspberry Pi for AI”.

IoT security matters. In his presentation, Antti Tolvanen (Etteplan) introduced the regulation of cyber security for IoT devices. Because of the widespread impact of IoT devices on people’s lives and the risk of poor data security, many countries have begun to regulate IoT security. The EU Cybersecurity Act, adopted in March 2019, has laid the foundations for regulating IoT in the EU.

The security of consumer IoT devices is now covered by ETSI TS 103 645, and corresponding definitions for IIoT applications and 5G devices are coming up. There is a voluntary system for certification of equipment against current requirements, and after two years it will be decided whether to make one of these mandatory.

The US and China also have their own legislation on the safety of IoT devices. US IoT security in many ways in the same direction as the EU for essential requirements.

https://www.androidauthority.com/intel-qualcomm-huawei-988011/

Intel, Qualcomm, Broadcom, and Xilinx have reportedly moved to stop supplying Huawei. Google has also suspended business with Huawei in the wake of the ban.

https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/20/several-chip-companies-including-qualcomm-and-intel-have-reportedly-stopped-supplying-huawei-after-blacklist/

According to Bloomberg, semiconductor companies Intel, Qualcomm, Xilinx and Broadcom will no longer supply Huawei until further notice. Another report says that Google has suspended some trade with Huawei, leaving it with access only to the open-source version of Android.

https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/20/huawei-responds-android/

https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3010986/heres-what-you-need-know-about-us-restrictions-huawei-and-entity-list

I am a bit worried because I am just posting with a smart phone made by Huawei.

Keep in mind that there is no strategy to develop a product that is best for everyone under every situation.

This article presents you eight different strategies that you can follow.