Forget the 'internet of things', it's a bubble.
Most of today's products advertised as IoT devices are no different from the vertical M2M products we have always used, and they are enjoying the benefits of rebranding. Other aspects of the IoT are dreamed of by venture capitalists and manufacturers who imagine themselves capable of creating a market for IoT consumers by overfunding and rewarding their ego in a rush of technical verbiage. As IoT slowly returns to the bottom of the technology maturity curve (Gartner), the real opportunity for further development of Internet devices must be sought in another aspect that is still in its infancy: IoV, Internet of Voice, literally 'Internet of Voice'.
The problem with this paradigm is that the IoT mostly collects information and then applies certain algorithms to it to extract the necessary value. It's not so easy. You need to create devices, figure out how to connect them together and hope that among the collected information there is something that can help attract potential users. But this takes time, at least to obtain a critical mass of products on the market. The Catch 22 paradox, ignored by many business plans, is that to understand the suitability and usefulness of a technology, you need to get the necessary information by launching tens of thousands of devices on the market. In the absence of clear advantages, such products are not sold at all. From wearable electronics manufacturers to smart cities, everyone is starting to understand the failure of the IoT business case, in particular due to the need for users to have a certain level of technical savvy for the initial installation and configuration of devices.
IoV uses a different principle. Rather than expecting users to know anything about the 'Internet of Things', the new concept poses questions and answers. No buttons, keyboards, no code, just ask. But in this lies the ability to control everything with which we interact. This could end our romantic relationship with smartphones and be perhaps the biggest threat to Apple today. In many ways, the 'internet of voices' is the latest step in the never-ending journey of human exploration. Throughout almost all of its history, mankind has been enthusiastically asking questions in an attempt to get a more or less adequate answer, be it the Delphic oracle or the more modern fruits of science fiction described in HAL or in the film 'She'. Today we can see how technology abolishes such requests into emptiness and users are drawn into it.
It is surprising that the voice lagged so far behind the video, given the desire of modern society for publicity and the expression of their thoughts orally. The voice quality over the telephone line was often not very good. Bluetooth – Headsets performed an important function of freeing the driver's hands while driving, but for most users and recipients of calls from a person with a headset, the fact of voice recognition was the best result. The more advanced part of the market worked hard to improve the quality of voice communications, but overall it was quite mediocre, and users put up with it. Recognizing voice through a headset was a rather controversial exercise, the success of which depended on the case.
Over the past few years, the very perception of voice control has changed significantly, albeit not immediately, but it has gained a limited circle of supporters. The change began with Siri, a voice assistant from Apple copied and augmented by Google Now and Microsoft Cortana. Users started talking to their phones. In May of last year, Sundar Pichai revealed that 20% of queries through the Google mobile search application were made by voice. However, the best indicator of voice control capabilities was the launch Amazon of its Echo speaker-powered Alexa assistant in late 2014.
The advent of Alexa made users familiar with the concept of talking to the Internet when they need to learn something, buy or listen to music. It became a signal of great change, eliminating the need to interact with the device, you no longer need to reach the phone or press the buttons, you can simply voice the request. The importance of change cannot be underestimated. This may seem creepy to some, but it’s so natural to ask the question that it’s not easy to understand why technology took so long to get there. But the reason for this is the complex nature of voice recognition. Its implementation requires the help of many technological improvements: reliable fast internet, inexpensive and fast cloud services and machine learning for voice recognition to transfer it from something new to the category of mundane operations. Put them together and here we are – the beginnings of the 'Internet of the voice'.
Once you start talking to the internet, everything changes. Amazon, Google and Microsoft continually present presentations showing the natural evolution of user input methods, from keyboards to mice, smartphones and voice input. They call them 'communication interfaces', referring to the evolution of the Internet from manual to voice input.
Why is it important? Five years from now, if voice recognition is developing at the same rate, people may look back and wonder why they used a keyboard. But this evolution has another aspect: people may also marvel at why they were typing anything on a smartphone at all. If all you need to do to get information is to voice a question, then it’s not surprising to completely abandon smartphones. Amazon could disrupt the smartphone market similar to how Apple disrupted the conventional cell phone market.
And that's why. Siri, Cortana and Google Voice Search have been used as replacements for the keyboard, eliminating the need to type. Alexa is doing something different. For many, the assistant has become a friend. As in normal conversation, you do not need to take something out of your pocket and press buttons, you just speak. In an interview with New Scientist, David Gill, director of operations for Alexa, said he was surprised at how often people try to use their voice assistant in social interactions. 'Every morning, thousands of people wish Alexa good morning, half a million confessed their love, 250,000 people offered their hand and heart. You can joke about this, but the most popular interaction is' thank you ', which means people want to be polite with technology.'
There is no doubt that the concept of IoV is close to users. Its application scenarios have become much more diverse compared to the first application for ordering goods with Amazon. And this happened thanks to the approach of the company, which provided anyone with the ability to add their own keywords.
Original material by Nick Khan
Of course, the point of view for our market is not very relevant, IoT penetration can hardly be called successful, our user in the general mass has not yet understood the meaning of a refrigerator connected to the Internet. But everything in due time, maybe it will come to us. But the question is, what will it be, the 'Internet of Things' or is it the 'Internet of Voices'? The second option is closer to me, at least, it is more universal in terms of use cases. Do you think the new approach is something revolutionary and capable of replacing smartphones for us?