Connect with us

Technology

12 Influential Smart Home Inventions, and Why They Matter

Published

4 years ago

on

Being influential doesn’t always translate to direct commercial success.

This pattern is the most visible in the music industry, in which many trendsetting bands often fail to achieve mainstream popularity. Artists like the Dead Kennedys, Kraftwerk, and Captain Beefheart all pioneered genres, but this translated to limited amounts of fame and fortune.

Such a paradigm can also be seen in technology, where it’s simply not possible for every new product to become the next iPhone. Like music, some tech products are well before their time, while others serve as important sources of inspiration before they ultimately fizzle out.

Influential Smart Home Inventions

Today’s infographic from The Zebra looks at the smart home inventions helping to define the future of the nascent home IoT market.

The devices listed below may not all be massive commercial successes like the Google Nest, but many of them will be cited as influences in helping shape the smart home.

12 Influential Smart Home Inventions

The above smart home inventions range from inactive projects like the Jibo social robot, which ran through its $73 million of funding, to more commercially successful and widely available products like the Sonos smart speaker and the Google Nest smart thermostat.

While they’ve had differing levels of adoption and success, all of the above products are expected to be major influences on the smart home market going forward.

Smart Influence

To see why these products are so interesting, let’s take a deeper look into some key spaces:

1. Utilities

Before smart technology, most home utilities were controlled inefficiently and crudely.

However, devices like tado° and Nest have shown that temperatures should be optimized based on the habits of the people that occupy the home, rather than via manual controls. To accomplish this optimization, tado° adjusts air conditioning or heating based on how close a user is to returning home, while Nest programs itself based on the users’ schedule.

Theoretically, these both allow for significant savings on energy bills, and future smart home inventions will likely follow in similar footsteps.

2. Security

In the past, if you were gone for a long time, your best option may have been to have friends, family, or neighbors check up on the property.

In the smart home era, security is quickly becoming a priority so that keeping an eye on your property can be easier, safer, and more effective. App-controlled smart locks like August can grant access to visitors via “virtual keys”, while Cocoon senses disturbances in the home and alerts users via smartphone.

3. Health and Entertainment

You do most of your living at home, and the smart home aims to make this experience healthier, while also making it convenient and pleasurable.

Smart home inventions such as Awair will allow you to monitor and analyze your home’s air quality, while detecting harmful allergens and irritants in real-time.

On the entertainment front, it’s worth noting that one of the most influential devices in this category — the Jibo social robot ⁠— has gone belly up. Despite this, it is commonly speculated that the robot was well before its time, and there are now a variety of companies working on similar ways to bring AI and robotics to the home.

The Future of the Smart Home

In the next decade, the smart home is expected to grow even more autonomous.

New products will be responding to trends pioneered by many of the above products, such as voice control, homeowner data sharing, appliance connectivity, AI integration, sophisticated security systems, and smart kitchen devices.

Subscribe to Visual Capitalist
Related Topics:
Click for Comments

Technology

Nvidia Joins the Trillion Dollar Club

America’s biggest chipmaker Nvidia has joined the trillion dollar club as advancements in AI move at lightning speed.

Published

5 days ago

on

May 30, 2023

By

Nvidia Joins the Trillion Dollar Club

Chipmaker Nvidia is now worth nearly as much as Amazon.

America’s largest semiconductor company has vaulted past the $1 trillion market capitalization mark, a milestone reached by just a handful of companies including Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft. While many of these are household names, Nvidia has only recently gained widespread attention amid the AI boom.

The above graphic compares Nvidia to the seven companies that have reached the trillion dollar club.

Riding the AI Wave

Nvidia’s market cap has more than doubled in 2023 to over $1 trillion.

The company designs semiconductor chips that are made of silicon slices that contain specific patterns. Just like you flip an electrical switch by turning on a light at home, these chips have billions of switches that process complex information simultaneously.

Today, they are integral to many AI functions—from OpenAI’s ChatGPT to image generation. Here’s how Nvidia stands up against companies that have achieved the trillion dollar milestone:

Joined ClubMarket Cap
in trillions		Peak Market Cap
in trillions
AppleAug 2018$2.78$2.94
MicrosoftApr 2019$2.47$2.58
AramcoDec 2019$2.06$2.45
AlphabetJul 2020$1.58$1.98
AmazonApr 2020$1.25$1.88
MetaJun 2021$0.68$1.07
TeslaOct 2021$0.63$1.23
NvidiaMay 2023$1.02$1.02

Note: Market caps as of May 30th, 2023

After posting record sales, the company added $184 billion to its market value in one day. Only two other companies have exceeded this number: Amazon ($191 billion), and Apple ($191 billion).

As Nvidia’s market cap reaches new heights, many are wondering if its explosive growth will continue—or if the AI craze is merely temporary. There are cases to be made on both sides.

Bull Case Scenario

Big tech companies are racing to develop capabilities like OpenAI. These types of generative AI require vastly higher amounts of computing power, especially as they become more sophisticated.

Many tech giants, including Google and Microsoft use Nvidia chips to power their AI operations. Consider how Google plans to use generative AI in six products in the future. Each of these have over 2 billion users.

Nvidia has also launched new products days since its stratospheric rise, spanning from robotics to gaming. Leading the way is the A100, a powerful graphics processing unit (GPU) well-suited for machine learning. Additionally, it announced a new supercomputer platform that Google, Microsoft, and Meta are first in line for. Overall, 65,000 companies globally use the company’s chips for a wide range of functions.

Bear Case Scenario

While extreme investor optimism has launched Nvidia to record highs, how do some of its fundamental valuations stack up to other giants?

As the table below shows, its price to earnings (P/E) ratio is second-only to Amazon, at 214.4. This shows how much a shareholder pays compared to the earnings of a company. Here, the company’s share price is over 200 times its earnings on a per share basis.

P/E RatioNet Profit Margin (Annual)
Apple30.225.3%
Microsoft36.136.7%
Aramco13.526.4%
Alphabet28.221.2%
Amazon294.2-0.5%
Meta33.919.9%
Tesla59.015.4%
Nvidia214.416.19%

Consider how this looks for revenue of Nvidia compared to other big tech names:

For some, Nvidia’s valuation seems unrealistic even in spite of the prospects of AI. While Nvidia has $11 billion in projected revenue for the next quarter, it would still mean significantly higher multiples than its big tech peers. This suggests the company is overvalued at current prices.

Nvidia’s Growth: Will it Last?

This is not the first time Nvidia’s market cap has rocketed up.

During the crypto rally of 2021, its share price skyrocketed over 100% as demand for its GPUs increased. These specialist chips help mine cryptocurrency, and a jump in demand led to a shortage of chips at the time.

As cryptocurrencies lost their lustre, Nvidia’s share price sank over 46% the following year.

By comparison, AI advancements could have more transformative power. Big tech is rushing to partner with Nvidia, potentially reshaping everything from search to advertising.

Continue Reading

Subscribe

Popular