Simon Fabri

This blog explores different aspects of what it takes to create great tech products. It is meandering journey as I amble around from topic to topic driven by where my curiosity takes me. Sometimes I try to explore different aspects of what makes truly great tech teams, while at other times I try to get under the skin of the latest tech hype or understand what's going on in a particular industry. This blog started off with a distinct IoT flavour, but now is fairly tech-agnostic.

Microsoft surprise many by accepting bitcoin payments

This week Microsoft announced that it was opening up to accept Bitcoin payments for its Xbox Live platform and Windows and Windows Phone stores through an integration with BitPay, a firm that provides bitcoin payment processing. Initially, bitcoin will be used to top-up Microsoft accounts, rather than to pay directly for a service or payment. Nevertheless, this move makes sense for Microsoft and aligns well with the younger demographic of Xbox Live. It definitely adds a serious dose of credibility … Read more…

Square processes $100m in a single day

Square, the US-based payments company best known for its mobile point-of-sale system has just announced that it has processed more than $100million worth of transactions in a single day. Probably the fact that the upcoming holiday season makes this the busiest time of year for consumer spending has some impact. This comes hot on the heels of a couple of significant partnership announcements made last month. First is a partnership with Snapchat to send money between friends, clearly addressing the … Read more…

Wearables in the workplace. A genuinely transformative opportunity?

This blog has already explored the future of wearables and outlined directions in which they are likely to form an integral part of the way we interact with others and with our surroundings. One of the key factors touched upon was the fact that features and functionality alone don’t guarantee the success of wearables devices. Like clothing, jewellery and other fashion accessories, they have to fulfil the wearer’s emotional needs such as self-concept, acceptance by others, reassurance, and status. Arguably, this is already true … Read more…

Intel – From Edison launch to Google Glass

Last week, I was introduced in person to Intel’s latest creation aimed at the maker movement – the low-power, small-format Edison chip. In a hands-on event in Shoreditch, London organised by Intel, I got to explore capabilities of the tiny computer, not much bigger than an SD memory card. It is clearly a very capable device, providing x86 compatibility to a wide range of products, and as such provides an alternative to Arduino and Raspberry Pi products. However this is not … Read more…

Business Models for the Internet of Things

I unsuccessfully tried to avoid calling this blog “Business Models for the Internet of Things” as there is no shortage of web articles on this topic. A recent Harvard Business Review online issue on the Internet of Things has triggered a fair deal of debate on whether IoT radically changes business models or to what extent unlocks new value. Like all technologies in the hyped ramp-up phase, it is often difficult to separate fact from fiction, and prediction from fanciful guesswork. Here I … Read more…

New wireless networks for M2M and IoT

Earlier this year, Arqiva, a UK company that owns most of the broadcast masts in the UK announced that it was building a nationwide wireless communications network for the Internet of Things. As we are accustomed to hearing mobile operators tell us how many billions of pounds are invested in their networks, how can it be profitable to build such a network from scratch just to provide low-cost connectivity to connect meters, trackers and the like? The answer is to … Read more…

Wearables – What does the future hold?

Wearable devices represent the product category currently carrying the consumer electronics industry’s burden of being the ‘next big thing’. Driven by advances in processing and communications chipsets developed in the pursuit of ever-cheaper smartphones, wearables are exhibiting the potential for diversity in shape, colour and function that has been banished from the smartphone world. But are hardware vendors right to bet on smart wearables as a means of supporting margins in the ever-competitive consumer electronics world? There is no shortage of forecast … Read more…

IOT World Forum Day 2 – completing the picture

Day 2 of the Internet of Things World Forum was characterised by a similar mix of speakers as the first day, with the mobile operator community being a lot more visible and engaged in the debate. Although there was no shortage of big numbers nor of technology companies offering solutions, a new set of themes emerged. 1. Manufacturing represents the biggest immediate opportunity Bernd Heinrichs of Cisco opened the session with a sweeping view of the IoT landscape. Much was made of the importance of … Read more…

IOT World Forum Day One – Some things we learnt

Today saw the first of two days at the Internet of Things World Forum in London (not to be confused with the event with the same title hosted by Cisco in Chicago earlier this year). Attendance was very high, though predominantly a corporate crowd – technology providers, IT companies, operators and investors. The vast majority of the smaller companies were so-called ‘horizontal enablers’ selling some form of IOT-related platform, middleware or gateway or other. Although much of the discussion was on innovation in individual segments … Read more…

Blackberry’s Project Ion

A year ago Blackberry was in what appeared to be terminal decline and attempts to find new owners failed. Newly-appointed CEO John Chen sought to turnaround the company by reconnecting to its core enterprise customers, stemming the losses that were haemorrhaging the company, and outsourcing manufacturing to China’s Foxconn. The rather bizarrely shaped Blackberry Passport phone has been somewhat emblematic of Mr Chen’s first year at the company – slightly more successful than expected. One pillar of Blackberry’s overall strategy … Read more…

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