If you had the chance to watch the Apple WWDC 2013 held in June, you must have checked out the new features on the new Apple iOS 7 or the new MacBook Pro. As always, Apple’s new features, enhancements, products were impressive. However, if you didn’t watch it closely enough you might have missed an interesting part of the announcement. It was not about the iPhone, or iPad; not even the MacBook.
Cross-integration
Starting 2014, leading automakers Acura, Chevrolet, Ferrari, Honda, Hyundai, Infiniti, Jaguar, Kia, Opel, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan and Volvo are going to adopt iOS integration in their cars. A few undisclosed models of these cars will allow you to sync your car’s entertainment systems with your iPhones. Yes, that includes calls, texts, maps and of course Siri. Named as ‘Siri Eyes Free’, it will allow you to control all of these through your voice while you keep your eyes on the road.
Let’s take a moment and think about the significance of this announcement – not only we are talking about cars in a high-tech developer conference, we are essentially porting the experience of a smartphone to a car thanks to the software platform. This is a fascinating example of industry convergence that is happening right now and is bound to open up a whole lot of new opportunities. This will let developers build apps specific to cars - the maps can provide live traffic information and integrate with social platform, predictive intelligence through car cameras can make the drive safer etc.
Building new tech
We have talked about convergence and its importance with respect to the far reaching impact on our lives. At a primary level, new technologies are enabling more and more industries to have an overlap zone. At the same time this is creating new marketplaces, new industries and competition between erstwhile unrelated companies. Innovation, at the dual axis of technologies and industries, is driving its rapid adoption and significantly enhanced functions and services are aiding the growth as well. We are talking about self-driven cars developed by Google, IBM’s supercomputer Watson defeating medicine’s best minds in terms of medical knowledge and application, wearable computing devices from multiple companies and a bestselling cloud platform from an ecommerce company - Amazon.
Mobile apps these days are no longer restricted to entertainment and office productivity. They track the physical activity of consumers and provide the incentive to lead a healthy lifestyle. They analyse the medical records of the individual and provide intuitive recommendations to patients with common ailments like blood sugar and hypertension. They use data feeds from cameras and sensors available in smartphones to provide basic care and assisted living for senior citizens. Given the high incidence of lifestyle-related ailments, technology can be boon and a bane at the same time. However, convergence with its ability to bring in best practices from totally unrelated areas is only helping improve the quality of life for most of us.
New interfaces
Core elements to enable technology convergence are natural user interfaces, miniaturisation, sensors, connectivity, imaging and platform-based development. Computing devices are becoming smaller, lighter and faster with miniaturisation of processors. Natural User Interfaces with respect to touch, voice and gesture-based recognition is revolutionising the way people interact with smart devices. Sensors are becoming cheap enough to be used more commonly across industrial and consumer goods. Connectivity is becoming more reliable and affordable with every passing day. Imaging as a technology is maturing with better algorithms, camera resolutions and processing powers, making it a core element to drive convergence. Platform-based development at embedded and application levels is providing a new dimension to leverage the technology foundation.
All these new technologies are enabling more and more industries to have an overlap zone. With significantly increasing healthcare costs and increasing life expectancy, preventive care is moving into patients’ hands. Today, more than 3.4 million US senior citizens use sensor-based network care monitoring solutions at home; this figure was just 0.1 million 6 years ago. Even devices designed for physicians aim at simplifying jobs by either handling complexity better or by providing real-time decision support information.
However, the story of convergence doesn’t end here. General Electric is now talking about a whole new level of convergence of intelligent data and machines that it believes will completely change the way global industry works. Termed as industrial internet, it foresees a world where global industrial system empowered with advanced computing and a low cost sensing network and connected via the internet will achieve disruptive efficiencies in rail, aviation, power generation, oil and gas development and healthcare. As per GE, this has the potential to add 15 trillion dollars to global GDP in the next 20 years. To put things into perspective, that’s the expected GDP of the entire European Union by 2040.
Convergence of technologies and industries is among the most fascinating opportunities of this decade and as always, the best is yet to come.
(The writer is Corporate Vice President, HCL Technologies)