The Cutting-Edge Consumer Tech Development from CES 2024.
As a company in tech these days, most things seem to happen behind a screen. Great and highly efficient, but this can create distance between creator and user. A reason for which we really value meeting and chatting with our partners and users; sharing insights, getting creative and inspiring each other. If that wasn’t good enough, we dare say that it is the place to be if you want to see the majority of new innovations ready to disrupt the world as we know it. Here, we’ll walk you through our findings, thoughts and projections for the future of Smart Home and Consumer Tech.
The Smart Home Market in 2024
As Global spending on IoT products is forecasted to reach $154.4bn in 2024, it was very pleasant to see this projection re-enacted through the sheer vastness of companies showcasing their solutions geared towards making your home or establishment smarter, easier to use, and actually useful!
Additionally, it was very fun to see how the event has become a key forum for IoT in B2B. Allowing for even more discussions on how this technology can be used to simplify life and operations. Many of which kept our Lead Wizard, Emil very busy throughout the show. Answering all types of technological questions for new parties eager to incorporate our tech into their solution.
As COVID previously created an upswing in the market, as opposed to a downturn in other segments. One could have deemed this growth to be temporary – people finding less time to optimize their homes. Yet, the outlook on interest and innovation in Smart Home at CES was a clear showcase of its growth and continued support by consumers. With more players joining the market, more appliances becoming connected and more people seeing the potential behind these technologies, it’s clear that Smart Home is still in its early stages with much room for development and innovation.
What do we foresee as the future of Smart Home?
On trend in the manufacturing of Smart Home devices in 2024, we’ve seen a lot of products focused on accessibility, reducing energy consumption, providing efficiency, and strengthening security or interoperability with Matter being highly discussed between consumers, producers, distributors, and alliance members.
With interoperability being one of the core values we provide the market, you can imagine our delight seeing the development and adoption of Matter as a standardized protocol for managing Smart Home products. For which we had a great time talking to all relevant stakeholders in the foundation, united to solve this massive issue in the market: users having multiple hubs from different product providers that do not cross-operate.
As described in a previous blog post about Matter, Flic will be joining global heavyweights Amazon, Apple, Google, and Samsung in developing our Hubs to be Matter Controllers – the analogy of being a household conductor to the many smart home musicians. Keep your eyes peeled as we’ll launch our Matter integration very soon, introducing expanded capabilities for both Flic Twist and Flic Button.
Other Trends in the World of Smart Home
We also believe that the development of Smart Home Products is going to move more and more towards creating hybrid products like we’ve seen from IKEA with the “canvas frame speaker” or the “speaker table lamp” made in collaboration with SONOS.
Other examples include the LG Air Purifying Table, Lawn Mowing robots with security features, and Air Purifier Robot speaker. Additionally, and as we’ll talk about more in the coming section, Smart Home products are going to be improved by AI. Where we expect to see a lot of new personal assistance robots come out.
Cool new products from CES 2024 that can be controlled with Flic:
Smartwings smart blinds
Ballie Smart Home Robot
Govee neon rope light 2
Nanoleaf Skylight & outdoor smart light strips
Philips Hue Dymera Smart Lights
Moving beyond Smart Home with AI – CES 2024
This year’s “ALL ON” CES has been nothing but packed with exciting news and releases from so many companies in different industries. But one thing stuck out beyond all else, and I’m sure you’ve guessed or know it already. It’s AI!
AI Massage chairs worthy of a Transformers feature, AI mattresses or pillows, AI Backpacks, AI Birdwatching goggles, AI Robots, AI Vacuums, AI plant-watering systems, AI coffee machines & bean grinders, AI dog companions, AI strollers and AI PCs… Where does it end!?
As these new technologies make their way into our lives, it’s been a refreshing sight to see these solutions take form as true utility for people’s lives. Making these smart solutions more accessible and packaged as tools that make the user’s lives easier, but perhaps not without any new headaches along the way.
How reliable will AI actually be?
Many of these new AI-empowered devices seem to take the path of wanting to be controlled through voice commands. As much as this allows for highly versatile commands with various devices, the problems with voice commands have been around for a long time and it would be good to question whether or not this should or can be the main alternative. Imagine you giving a command and your robot friend misinterprets you by believing you said something bad. As the AI continuously learns, would it create a bias from this misinterpretation? What can this misinterpretation or bias lead to?
How do we tackle the risks associated with AI?
You could see it like this:
Technology is neutral.
We get to create technology for good.
But it’s easy to get scared about AI, because of its massive potential.
Pat Gelsinger, CEO of Intel has some good points about this:
“Tech moves faster than product. Products move faster than business and business move faster than regulation.” If the proper regulations are not in place ahead of the development of AI, it is only natural to feel fear towards its potential development… But, we don’t have to end up living in “The Matrix”.
The solution to good AI development.
Basically, like with the tech-boom, it falls upon the organizations working in the field to realize their need to support in the development of proper regulations from politicians for this field to develop in a contained non-harmful manner. Something that fex Mustafah Suleyman talks about a lot. With experience working on Deepmind and now his own company pi.ai, he is trying to include more people in the discussion of containment for AI – for which he released a book “The Coming Wave”, which we can highly recommend.
To paraphrase his statements on the solution; Make AI through an open model and allow people to deduce for themselves if it is good or not, allowing regulators the same understanding and chance to determine its purpose or value…
What do we take away from all this?
As Smart Home trends extend beyond shaping our living environments to enhancing our overall well-being, granting us additional personal time. This wave of developments signifies the intersection of technology, convenience, and intelligence, paving the way for a future characterized by increased intelligence, efficiency, and thrilling possibilities with bigger collaborative requirements. Going from Smart to Sentient Home, one step at a time. With still a long way to go.
Some Final Words from us:
It was such a pleasure to meet everyone at CES 2024. Seeing how each company is pacing forward, innovating, and improving on the current state of tech. It’s a show that inspires and empowers us all to do more great things, with even more cool gadgets.
We look forward to next year, when we get to do it all again, with some very exciting news.
Sincerely, The Flic Team.
