If you dream of watching the Northern Lights in decadent style, then you should wait until 2017—when this wonderful, floating, snowflake-shaped hotel will be ready in the icy reaches of northern Norway.
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-- For more information read the original article here.
we reveal that iRobot has shipped over 6 million home robots, including Roombas, in the last four years and a half. We also assess the market for consumer and office robots, taking a close look at the three distinct applications within this market, and how this emerging category now represents nearly all the growth in the increasingly diverse global robotics industry.
Consider:
- We believe the market for home and office robots will grow from $673 million in 2014 to $1.5 billion in 2019, for a five-year CAGR of 17.39%. Note: Our estimate for the size of the consumer/office robot market excludes devices marketed to children as toys.
- That means the market for consumer and office robots is growing seven times faster than the one for industrial robots.
- One company, iRobot, is set to break the $500 million revenue mark this year on the back of home robots.
- iRobot's success has attracted major manufacturers to the robotic floor cleaning market, including LG, Samsung, Neato, Hoover and others. Robotic vacuums have only achieved ~15% penetration in North America, Europe, and Asia. (See chart, below.)
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In full, the report:
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Dives into why the multibillion-dollar global market for robotics, long dominated by industrial and logistics uses, has begun to see a shift toward new consumer and office applications.
- Explains how the consumer/office robot market is currently led by three distinct categories: home cleaning and maintenance, “telepresence” (i.e., telecommuting to events or remote offices), and advanced home entertainment robots.
- Analyzes why smartphones and tablets have made it easier to develop robots for consumer and office applications.
- Looks at why would-be robot vendors face some major obstacles: one is the well-studied revulsion that most people feel toward robots that are too humanoid in appearance, and another is the high price demanded for key object manipulation technologies.
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If the auto marketplace is a pimply face, Tesla Motors is a hot needle, prodding away.
Over the past decade, the high-end electric vehicle maker has built a niche following in a remote corner of the market, only posting its first profit in 2013. But with a mid-range, mass-market production model scheduled for release by 2017, it looks like founder Elon Musk has bigger plans for his car company. Tesla recently announced its proposal to blanket the nation with high-speed electric vehicle stations, providing 98 percent population coverage by the end of 2015; and on July 31, the company announced a partnership with Panasonic as it plans construction of a large-scale battery plant somewhere in the U.S.
The planned factory is expected to span 10 million square feet, employ 6,500 people by 2020, and provide a lot of economic benefit to the state where the factory is built. Tesla says it is considering Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada as possible sites (California was removed from Tesla's list earlier this year for no specified reason).
As states in the southwest try to woo Tesla, others -- like New Jersey -- debate whether the car maker's distribution model is good for consumers, or even legal.
Tesla doesn't use dealerships to sell its vehicles, but rather sells its vehicles directly from showrooms. In most states, auto franchise laws make this model of vehicle distribution illegal. Though New Jersey looked the other way for a year, as Gov. Chris Christie said in July, The Garden State had to put its foot down and enforce the franchise laws. “I don't like the law either,” Christie said. “I didn't vote for it. I didn't sign it. But I don't get to just ignore the laws I don't like.”
Legislation is now pending before the full Senate that would make Tesla an exception to the franchise laws, allowing the company to make direct sales in four New Jersey showrooms. The proposed law would also alter the state's franchise laws to provide new protections to dealerships.
Musk's stance is well publicized – he says the intent of the franchise laws is being twisted to prevent his company from fairly competing in the marketplace. The intent of the laws, he wrote in a blog post, was not to prevent a new company that has no franchises from selling directly to consumers, but simply to protect existing franchisees -- For more information read the original article here.
Apple's new operating system for mobile phones and tablets, iOS 8, is slated to release in the fall, and one of its features will transform how you use your apps.
Apple calls it Extensibility, and it basically allows your apps to share both information and functionality with each other, which means less time spent switching between apps.
Let's say you have a favorite app for editing your photos, such as Adobe Photoshop Express.
Before Extensibility, you would need to be inside Photoshop Express in order to use its editing tools. But with Extensibility, you'll be able to access those same editing tools right from within Apple's native Photos app. The editing tools from Photoshop Express would act as the "extension" in this case, and the Photos app would then have access to that extension, allowing you to take advantage of Photoshop Express' unique features and functionality even from within outside apps.
Popular password management app 1Password has already demonstrated how it will use Extensibility to let users easily fill in password info from within any app. Before, you had to boot up 1Password, copy the password for a site or app, and then open the site or app and paste it in. But Extensibility eliminates those extra steps. Other apps can plug into 1Password and let you use it without opening a separate app.
So how does it work?
There are different types of extensions depending on how and where they will share information with other apps. Apple wants to prevent apps from simply having full access to all of the information in your other apps, so extensions are focused on particular functions and tasks, such as Share, Action, and Photo Editing.
It's important to note that an app won't be able to randomly request important info from another app without your consent. You have complete control over when an app makes a request to use an extension, meaning an app can't request your PayPal password from 1Password unless you ask it to.
Besides being secure, Extensibility means more information at your fingertips, and faster.
Apple, for example, is allowing extensions to plug directly into your iPhone's Notification Center, where it will act as a widget. If you want to stay up to date on the latest scores, you could enable ESPN's Sports Center app -- For more information read the original article here.
-- For more information read the original article here.