Rob Conant, Founder and CEO, Cirrent, provides insight on several key industry trends for Parks Associates’ 20th-annual CONNECTIONS Conference, which will be held May 24-26 in San Francisco:
How is your company engaging consumers through new technology solutions?
Arthur Clarke said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Cirrent's technology helps make connected products feel magical to consumers—things just work.
What is the biggest change you have seen in the past year in the connected home and entertainment industries?
We see infrastructure compressing—people expect always-on connectivity on their devices no matter where they are, and they don't want to be IT managers for their products. These expectations are tough to achieve with traditional approaches—many connected home products need a complete rethink to be easier to use than unconnected products. We've seen some hints of this coming about in the past year.
What do you think is the biggest driver for the connected consumer market?
The biggest driver is simplicity. People want products that make their lives easier. And that doesn't mean learning how to program your home, it means having things just work.
What is the greatest challenge for the connected home industry in the next year?
The biggest challenge in the connected home industry is moving to specific, useful value propositions for users: Safety. Security. Saving time. Saving money. Value propositions like this must be front and center in the marketing of the products, and more importantly must be front and center in the experience of the products.
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Conant will speak on the session “IoT: Protecting the Consumer Experience” on Tuesday, May 24 at 2:45 p.m. Other speakers on the panel include Support.com, PlumChoice, Arrayent, and CSS Corp.
For more information on CONNECTIONS, visit www.connectionsus.com or register by clicking here.
