Hardware

Easyjet – Electric Planes By 2030

Posted on by Andy Miller

Easyjet is reported to have backed plans to develop and introduce commercial passenger aircraft powered by electric batteries on its short-haul routes, possibly by 2030.

Prototype

A prototype battery-powered, electric aircraft with a range of 335 miles is already being built by one-year-old US company Wright Electric, the same company that Europe’s no.2 low-cost airline Ryanair has been working in partnership with.

Wright Electric’s prototype is reported to be a nine-seater plane, although its CEO Jeff Engler, is reported as saying that the company is also starting work on a 50-seat version. Wright Electric estimates that an electric aircraft of this kind could reduce the energy costs of a plane by around 30%, and that its 9-seater prototype could be ready for testing by next year.

Easyjet & Wright

Easyjet’s involvement with Wright Electric is thought to date back to May last year when discussions were held with the start-up after it announced its intentions to offer an electric-powered commercial flight from London to Paris in 10 years. Easyjet is reported not to have invested money in Wright, but its validation and support of Wright’s work appears to be a considerable driver in the development of the new type of aircraft.

New Battery Technology = New Aircraft Design

It has been reported that new energy technology that could contribute to lighter batteries will need to be developed to make the development of electric aircraft successful. These new batteries could then be used to power the propellers or fans of aeroplane engines, meaning that motors could then be put inside a plane’s wings, rather than be slung underneath them.

Advantages of Battery-Powered, Electric Aircraft

The advantages of battery-powered, electric aircraft over current aircraft would be huge cost savings (no expensive oil-based fuel required), quieter planes that are also more environmentally friendly (no fuel emissions), more aerodynamic planes with less drag (with motors inside the wings rather than outside), and a more sustainable aviation industry.

Others Working On Electric Planes

Wright Electric is not the only company working on developing battery-powered, electric aircraft. For example, Zunum, backed by Boeing Co, is also reported to be working on an engine turbine from France’s Safran SA to power an electric motor for a hybrid plane, and Siemens is reported to have been working on developing electric motors for aircraft in collaboration with Airbus.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

For the aircraft industry, the development of battery-powered, electric aircraft could be an important new development with positive benefits. For example, airlines using these aircraft could save money, tackle pollution (noise and emissions), and publicise the environmental benefits to customers as a differentiating competitive advantage that could have positive rub-off value on the aircraft brand. Quieter, cleaner planes could also help airports to reduce their environmental impact, and could provide a feel-good factor to customers.

There are clearly many technological challenges to be overcome first, hence the estimate of at least 10 years development time, but it is exciting and promising to think that planes are going the same way as cars in terms of harnessing new battery / electric technologies and creating more sustainable, lower environmental impact transport for the future. In reality, it seems likely that hybrid versions of commercial aircraft rather than full battery-powered, electric aircraft will be the first to be introduced.
The new technologies developed along the way to producing battery-powered, electric aircraft will, in themselves, also create many new engineering and business opportunities.

New Tech Laws For AI Bots & Better Passwords

Posted on by Andy Miller

It may be no surprise to hear that California, home of Silicon Valley, has become the first state to pass laws to make AI bots ‘introduce themselves’ (i.e. identify themselves as bots), and to ban weak default passwords. Other states and countries (including the UK) may follow.

Bot Law

With more organisations turning to bots to help them create scalable, 24-hour customer services, together with the interests of transparency at a time when AI is moving forward at a frightening pace, California has just passed a law to make bots identify themselves as such on first contact. Also, in the light of the recent US election interferences, and taking account of the fact that AI bots can be made to do whatever they are instructed to do, it is thought that the law has also been passed to prevent bots from being able to influence election votes or to incentivise sales.

Duplex

The ability of Google’s Duplex technology to make the Google Assistant AI bot sound like a human and potentially fool those it communicates with is believed to have been one of the drivers for the new law being passed. Google Duplex is an automated system that can make phone calls on your behalf and has a natural-sounding human voice instead of a robotic one. Duplex can understand complex sentences, fast speech and long remarks, and is so authentic that Google has already said that, in the interests of transparency, it will build-in the requirement to inform those receiving a call that it is from Google Assistant / Google Duplex.

Amazon, IBM, Microsoft and Cisco are also all thought to be in the market to get highly convincing and effective automated agents.

Only Bad Bots

The new bot law, which won’t officially take effect until July 2019 is only designed to outlaw bots that are made and deployed with the intent to mislead the other person about its artificial identity for the purpose of knowingly deceiving.

Get Rid of Default Passwords

The other recent tech law passed in California and making the news is a law banning easy to crack but surprisingly popular default passwords, such as ‘admin’, ‘123456’ and ‘password’ in all new consumer electronics from 2020. In 2017, for example, the most commonly used passwords were reported to be 123456, password, 12345678 and qwerty (Splashdata). ‘Admin’ also made number 11 on the top 25 most popular password lists, and it is estimated that 10% of people have used at least one of the 25 worst passwords on the list, with nearly 3% of people having used the worst password, 123456.

The fear is, of course, that weak passwords are a security risk anyway, and leaving easy default passwords in consumer electronics products and routers from service providers has been a way to give hackers easier access to the IoT. Devices that have been taken over because of poor passwords can be used to conduct cyber attacks e.g. as part of a botnet in a DDoS attack, without a user’s knowledge.

Password Law

The new law requires each device to come with a pre-programmed password that is unique to each device, and mandates any new device to contain a security feature that asks the user to generate a new means of authentication before access is granted to the device for the first time. This means that users will be forced to change the unique password to something new as soon as the device is switched on for the first time.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

For businesses using bots to engage with customers, if the organisation has good intentions, there should not be a problem with making sure that the bot informs people that it is a bot and not a human, As AI bots become more complex and convincing, this law may become more valuable. Some critics, however, see the passing of this law as another of the many reactions and messages being sent about interference by foreign powers e.g. Russia, in US or UK affairs.

Stopping the use of default passwords in electrical devices and forcing users to change the password on first use of the item sounds like a very useful and practical law that could go some way to preventing some hackers from gaining easy access to and taking over IoT devices e.g. for use as part of a botnet in bigger attacks. It has long been known that having the same default password in IoT devices and some popular routers has been a vulnerability that, unknown to the buyers of those devices, has given cyber-criminals the upper hand. A law of this kind, therefore, must at least go some way in protecting consumers and the companies making smart electrical devices.

Resurrecting An Old Android Phone Is Easier Than You Think

Posted on by Andy Miller

Many of us have an old Android phone somewhere in the house, doing nothing. Rather than leaving it there to add no value to your life and work, you may find that it’s much easier than you think to resurrect it.

Look Beyond The Launch

Even though your phone may have been the greatest and the fastest when it was launched, the passage of time doesn’t necessarily mean that it has become obsolete.

Performance issues can, of course, be exaggerated by age and resource limitations, but there are some steps you can take to clean-up your old android phone and bring it back into active service. These steps could include:

  • Freeing -up storage space. Begin this process by backing up the media that you have on the phone. This can be done by opening Google photos, selecting “Settings,” “Back up & sync” and activating the toggle that appears. This will allow you to back up your photos and images to the cloud. Get Google’s free Files Go app, open it, grant the app permission to access your phone’s storage, and from here you will be given suggestions for freeing-up space on your device. For example, this can include removing junk and duplicate files, removing downloaded files and large files, and deleting the photos and videos (now that you have back-up copies).
  • Getting rid of unused apps. This is a good move on any phone anyway as a way to improve security. In the case of refreshing your phone, the Files Go app can show you which apps are unused and therefore suitable to uninstall. You can also regain more phone resources by clearing out your app clutter. For apps that came pre-installed (and can’t be uninstalled), look for a button to disable those apps.
  • Using ‘lite’ app alternatives. Using ‘lite’ versions of the apps that you’d still like to have on the old phone e.g. Facebook, Google Maps and Skype lite, can mean that you get plenty of basic functionality, but take up less phone resources.
  • Reducing background activity / check-ins by certain apps. This can make the phone run faster, and can reduce monthly bills.
  • Making sure your apps are up to date. Checking-in with Play Store and making sure you have the newest (lite) versions of apps on your old phone can prevent many of the problems caused by less optimized older versions.
  • Making sure the home screen is up to date and not slowing things down. You may want to use a third-party launcher e.g. the free Lawnchair Launcher.
  • Keeping the software animations to a minimum. This will involve accessing the system settings ‘Drawing’ section, but could help towards speeding your old android phone up.
  • Trying a ‘factory reset’. This can make the phone run faster. Again, this is likely to involve accessing the ‘System’ section (after making sure everything important is backed-up).
  • Adding new, efficiency-enhancing apps.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

A succession of updated models, the need (or, being convinced by marketing of the need) to constantly upgrade to the next best model, along with a throwaway society means that there is so much wastage when it comes to devices, especially mobile phone handsets. This is why many businesses have seized the opportunity of refurbishing and re-selling them e.g. smartfonestore.com, Second-hand Phones.Com, envirofone.com and more.

There’s no doubt that smart-phones have become an important part of our lives with 78% of all adults now owning one, and with each of us checking our phone once every 12 minutes on average during our waking hours (Ofcom). Web browsing and using chat and other apps (WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger) are now equally as important as actually being able to make a call, so as long as your re-conditioned / resurrected phone has the storage space, speed, and available resources to accommodate modern apps (lite versions), you could be saving yourself money and making life easier for yourself by bringing it back into use.

Apple’s Autonomous Car Involved in Crash

Posted on by Andy Miller

Apple’s new autonomous vehicle, part of its ‘Project Titan’, has joined an expanding list of self-driving car prangs.

What Autonomous Vehicle?

Apple is reported to have been working on vehicle projects since 2015 under the name of ‘Project Titan’. Ever since the early reports, there has been much speculation about when an iCar will come onto the market.

The evidence, that this would be likely, came in the form of reports of hundreds of Apple employees working on a car project, hints during an interview with CEO Tim Cook back in June 2007, reports of two Apple computer scientists publishing research about a 3D detection system (that could be used in an autonomous car), and in July this year, news that an ex-Apple employee had been charged with stealing trade secrets from Apple to take to a Chinese car start-up.

Apple is also reported to be working with VW on a driverless vehicle to shuttle its employees to and from work.
The Apple car involved in the recent accident is a Lexus SUV that is being used as part of the testing for its autonomous car project.

In Driverless Mode, But Rear-Ended

In this case, even though the Apple autonomous vehicle was in driverless mode at the time, the cause of the crash (last month) is thought to be that the driver of a Nissan Leaf rear-ended the Apple car while it was doing less than 1 mph, trying to find a safe space to merge onto Lawrence Expressway in California.

Most Autonomous Vehicle Crashes Caused By Humans

It’s tempting to think that testing autonomous vehicles on public roads is bound to result in crashes caused by faults with the technology. In fact, the statistics tell a different story and indicate that human error has been the main cause of accidents involving autonomous vehicles.

For example, Axios research shows that only 8% of these types of crashes were caused by a vehicle fault, and only one such crash happened when the vehicle was in autonomous mode. In fact, six out of seven accidents happened while a human was driving, and only one of a total 57 accidents to date involving moving autonomous vehicles was caused by a fault with the AI. One more left-field statistic is that self-driving vehicles have actually been attacked by humans 3 times!

That said, and joking aside, it’s worth acknowledging that there has already been one fatality related to driverless cars. It happened when a woman was hit by a driverless car that was being tested by Uber while she was crossing the street in Tempe, Arizona.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Although we may not be entirely convinced yet, or used to the idea of cars, lorries, and even planes operating autonomously on our roads and above our heads, the fact is that all have been tested, and look likely to become a more regular reality. At this time, it is still relatively early days for autonomous vehicles which means that there are still many untapped opportunities to use autonomous vehicles commercially, and there are of course many challenges and issues to consider around safety, insurance, regulations and reliability. For the time being, autonomous vehicles are, therefore, likely to be adopted more quickly on closed sites but operators who decide to adapt such sites to work for autonomy could expect significant improvements in productivity and safety.

As the technology to operate these vehicles becomes more advanced, prices decrease, and technical and operational problems are ironed-out, their potential to add-value to businesses / organisations / cities .e.g. for distribution / logistics, public transport, and many other uses will become apparent. They may also offer cost savings, greater reliability and easier management and planning, which are appealing benefits to businesses.

Diabetes Eye Disease Diagnosing System Needs No Doctors

Posted on by Andy Miller

An AI system for diagnosing eye disease caused by diabetes that has been approved for use in the US works autonomously and doesn’t need a doctor to interpret its results.

New Way To Solve Old Problem

Diabetic retinopathy, a leading cause of blindness among adults, is caused by high blood sugar levels damaging the blood vessels of the light-sensitive tissue at the back of the eye / the retina. The condition affects up to eight out of 10 people who have had diabetes for 10 years or more.

Given the extent of the problem, Google and DeepMind are reported to have been working on building machine-learning algorithms for detecting diabetic retinopathy for some time.

The new AI-based device from Iowa diagnostics company IDx LLC is the first FDA-approved AI system for diagnosing this particular eye disease.

No Doctors Required For Diagnosis

The system can be used to spot the disease i.e. signs of mild diabetic retinopathy in scans of people’s retinas. This would normally be a job that would require human input, and as such, the new device is a first in eye care.

Although the system can diagnose the disease on its own, and therefore, doesn’t require a doctor’s input for diagnosis, it cannot recommend treatment plans, as this requires human doctors.

How Does It Work?

The system uses two convolutional neural networks.

The first one studies and analyses the image quality of retinal scans, from this it can determine if the focus, colour balance, and exposure are good enough to pass the photos to the diagnostic algorithm.

The second stage / network looks for common signs of damage related to the disease e.g. haemorrhages from burst blood vessels which may be caused by unstable blood sugar levels.

From these processes, the system is able to make a diagnosis.

How Accurate Is It?

Given the complicated nature of the medical condition, the accuracy of the system has been tested (using 900 subjects) in terms of its sensitivity, specificity and imageability. The device is reported to have scored 87% sensitivity i.e. identifying patients who have a mild version of the condition, 90% cent specificity i.e. indentifying those with no eye damage, and 96% imageability i.e. a high enough quality of image was generated to achieve a diagnosis.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

AI is being incorporated in more value adding and innovative ways to solve many problems across all industries and sectors, and as such, represents an opportunity for those businesses developing devices and systems with an AI element.

Not only does this device perform an important part of a service that hitherto required expert human input, it also frees up time that the human expert would have spent on diagnosis, thereby allowing valuable medical resources to be extended and allocated elsewhere. This demonstrates how AI can add value, save time / costs, and allow more leverage to be gained from existing services.

We already trust devices / machinery to handle many important aspects of medical care, and with this in mind, there should be no real reason to mistrust the accuracy and fitness for purpose of this system, particularly given that it has been tested, and that there will be human input at the treatment plan stage that may help to spot any errors.

AI in medical care represents an important step into the future that could bring some incredible benefits.

Uber Moves Into Bikes & Scooters

Posted on by Andy Miller

Ride-hailing service Uber, which has until recently been associated with cars, has announced a shift in focus towards bikes and scooters in order to drive growth and keep people using the platform.

The Challenges

Uber has faced a number of challenges in recent times, some of which have been of its own making. These challenges have included:

  • Congestion in inner-city areas (particularly in rush hour), the exact places where many of its customers use the service in large numbers to travel short distances. Uber itself has been accused by Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, of adding to city’s congestion problems. This has resulted in another challenge in that city for Uber – a suggested cap on the number of Uber drivers. New York has also voted to impose a temporary cap on new licences for ride-hailing vehicles in order to tackle congestion
  • Trouble over licences, the effect on revenue, and associated bad press. For example, Uber only has a 15-month provisional licence in London which was only granted on appeal this year.
  • The need to get the company into good financial shape before it is floated on the stock market, with a value of up to $70bn.
  • More bad press and potentially costly problems relating to Uber resisting court rulings giving employment rights to its drivers.
  • The opportunity of getting a substantial piece of the mobility market, but not being in the ideal position to do so.
  • The need to keep engagement of customers with the company / brand.
  • The need to drive growth in the longer term.

The Solution

The solution for Uber, according to its Boss Dara Khosrowshahi, is to diversify into bikes and scooters. The main reasons for this is that they will be more effective and efficient than cars in congested city areas, they represent a way to get another slice of the lucrative mobility market, and they can be used to help shape consumer behaviour and keep levels of engagement high.

How?

Uber has already also invested in electric scooter company Lime, invested in several bike firms over last year (including spending $200m on bike-sharing firm Jump), and added e-bikes to its app in some US cities. This has already enabled Uber to offer Jump electric bikes in eight US cities, including New York and Washington, and soon Berlin.

Playing The Longer Game

Uber has admitted that although the shift in focus will not bring short-term financial benefits, it should take the company nearer to where it wants to be in the longer term.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

This is an example of a business thinking with more strategic clarity, seeing their market as the whole ‘mobility market’, and finding a relatively simple solution for themselves to position themselves for a wider share of it through diversification, and in the meantime finding a way around some of the more immovable challenges e.g. congestion.

Uber has built a brand that has married new technology with existing technologies and services (mobile use and apps with car-hailing services), has experimented with future technologies e.g. driverless cars, but has also made the headlines for less positive reasons. Users of the service simply have a basic need to get from A to B as quickly, safely, and cheaply as possible, and bikes may well prove popular, as well as addressing some environmental concerns.

Apple iPad Battery Gas Leak – Shop Evacuated

Posted on by Andy Miller

The leaking of vapours from a damaged iPad battery led to an Amsterdam shop being evacuated and 3 staff being treated for breathing problems caused by the released gas.

Fire Brigade Called

Although the fire brigade was called and attended, there were no reports of any actual flames / fire coming from the affected iPad. Staff had, however, initially reacted to the smoking iPad by putting it in a sand-filled fire bucket.

Incidents of Similar Faults

Reports online indicate that similar faults have occurred elsewhere since Apple had started its iPhone battery replacement programme e.g. as reported on the Apple news site 9to5mac. Some reports indicate Apple stores in Switzerland , Spain and Hong Kong have been evacuated and medical incidents being reported this year due to problems with combusting / fumes from iPhone batteries.

While details are patchy, the insinuation by some commentators has been that the incidents involved the batteries of phones that been brought into the shop as part of the battery replacement programme.

There have, for example, been reports from 3 years ago of old batteries giving off smoke if pierced during replacement, although it is not clear if this was the cause of the latest incident.

What Battery Replacement Programme?

Back in 2017, Apple apologised for intentionally slowing down older iPhones (Phone 6, iPhone 6s, iPhone SE and iPhone 7 models), perhaps with a view to encouraging upgrades. Since Apple’s actions were discovered, Apple owners with older models complained of facing huge costs for upgrading, and Apple highlighted how older batteries lose power over time. This led to Apple deciding to introduce a battery replacement programme. This means that Apple will offer anyone with an iPhone 6 or above a newer battery for just £25. This represents a £54 saving.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Apple phones are widely used and valued by business people and home users alike. The revelation of Apple deliberately slowing down phones to speed up the act of customers replacing their devices with the latest (and some would say expensive) versions, blotted what had been a relatively clean copy-book. The battery replacement programme appeared to be a practical way to perhaps gain customer trust back, say sorry, and legitimately solve some battery problems.

Like many phone makers, however, the at times unpredictable and potentially dangerous behaviour of some lithium-ion batteries can cause some very unwelcome incidents and publicity e.g. the Samsung Galaxy Note 7. These incidents illustrate how important it is that all aspects of the value chain in the creation and branding of premium products are right.

There may be real hope for phone manufacturers, however, since Norwegian scientists at IFE claim to have discovered a new wonder-material, ‘SiliconX’, for phone batteries that can stabilise silicon anodes for Li-ion batteries and offer five times the charge capacity.

Apple Wins Trillion Dollar Company Race

Posted on by Andy Miller

The latest figures from Apple appear to show that it has beaten tech giants like Amazon in the race to become the world’s first trillion dollar company.

‘Alarmingly Healthy’ Finances

It has been reported that Apple’s finance chief, Luca Maestri has described Apple’s current financial state as being “alarmingly healthy” after a net profit of a staggering $48.5 billion in was made in 2017, with $285 billion of cash reserves.

Reaching The Trillion Mark

The Trillion dollar valuation was reached thanks to a jump in Apple’s share price last Thursday that was driven by quarterly financial results that were better than Wall Street had expected for the US company that was founded back in 1976.

The Figures

Record sales of $53.3bn, coupled with $11.5bn profits in 3 months boosted confidence and share value in the tech behemoth to the point where the value of Apple jumped from $935bn to $1tn.

To give some context to this figure, Apple’s $1tn market value is larger than the economies of Turkey and Switzerland, and more than a third the size of the UK economy!

Great Products

Apple’s 42 year rise to mega-value has been fuelled by some great, highly differentiated, popular, and profitable products such as the Macintosh, the iPod and the iPhone – although the iPhone hasn’t always met sales expectations.

Not PetroChina Then?

No. Contrary to reports that energy company PetroChina hit the magic $1tn valuation back in 2007, it has since been revealed that only 2% of the company was released for public trading, and the resulting value claim is, therefore, widely regarded as being unreliable.

Delighted…Understandably

Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, is reported as expressing his delight at the news of the record-breaking value of the company, and attributed the recent good financial results to strong sales of the iPhone, as well as Services and Wearables.

What Does This Mean For Your Company?

While it’s interesting (and perhaps not unexpected) and inspirational to hear of the incredible financial milestone that Apple has reached, and its true that Apple sometimes has a fan-like following for its innovative, differentiated, and aesthetically pleasing personal gadgets, the wealth of another tech giant is a world away from the daily business reality that many face in the UK, particularly with the uncertainty of Brexit on the horizon.

Some critics may also say that its relatively small tax contributions in some overseas markets e.g. Ireland (where it was ordered to pay €13bn in back taxes) have contributed to its profitability. Also, another blot on Apple’s copy-book in the name of cost-cutting has been the revelations over poor working conditions in Chinese factories where Apple iPhones are manufactured dating back as far as 2009.

Amazon has been seen by many commentators as being locked in battle with Apple to reach the $1tn mark, and will no doubt be disappointed at missing-out on being the first to cross this lucrative finishing line.

‘SiliconX’ Next-Generation Battery Material Discovered

Posted on by Andy Miller

Norwegian scientists at IFE claim to have discovered a new wonder-material for future battery production that they have dubbed ‘SiliconX’.

Years Of Research

The new material, discovered by scientists at Norway’s Department of Energy Technology (IFE) reportedly offers a way to stabilise silicon anodes for Li-ion batteries. This is an aim that years of targeted research and experimental trials with nano-particles has been intended to achieve.

The Challenge

The challenge has been that silicon anodes can far-exceed the lithium ion storage capacity of carbon anodes, and the change in size as they absorb the ions causes a physical swelling and shrinking that can destroy the structure of a Si-Li-ion battery.

The Solution – SiliconX

The solution that the Norwegian scientists claim to have found is to use nano-particles in a finely divided mixture of silicon and another material that the scientists have called ‘the matrix’. It is this matrix that helps the silicon to withstand the big volume changes, and thereby solve the bulging / shrinking problem that would normally wreck the battery.

Much Greater Charge Capacity

The end result has been, as well as the stability, that the new SiliconX battery is reported to have three to five times the charge capacity of the negative electrode compared to common graphite technology.

Freedom From Daily Phone Charging

In short, if your smartphone battery was made from SiliconX that behaves the way that the Norwegian scientists claim, you would not need to charge that smartphone every day.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Problems with phone batteries have damaged the performance of many phones, and tarnished the reputation of their manufacturers e.g. Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 batteries catching fire.

The obvious benefits of a SiliconX battery for business users are the convenience of not having to keep charging your phone, and the elimination of the worry that a lack of sufficient battery charge will leave you incommunicado when you’re not near a charging socket / in the middle of nowhere, and / or in the middle of / needing to make calls that are vital to the business.

The fact that the battery materials are more stable may also eliminate some of the safety worries about batteries that have been in the back of many users’ minds since the Galaxy Note 7 fire incidents.

First Blockchain ‘Cryptocurrency’ Smartphone

Posted on by Andy Miller

Taiwanese electronics company Huawei Technologies Ltd. (HTC), and Swiss-based Sirin Labs are both introducing blockchain smartphones.

HTC

HTC’s Exodus blockchain smartphone, which it is believed will be priced at around $1,000, and is reported to have “tens of thousands” of reservations globally. The smartphone, from the world’s third largest phone manufacturer, will be released this year, will come with a built-in (offline) wallet for storing cryptocurrencies, and will act as a computer node in a blockchain network.

What Is Blockchain?

Blockchain is an incorruptible peer-to-peer network (a kind of ledger) that allows multiple parties to transfer value in a secure and transparent way. Blockchain’s Co-Founder Nic Carey describes Blockchain as being like “a big spreadsheet in the cloud that anyone can use, but no one can erase or modify”. Blockchain is the technology at the heart of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, is open-source, and free.

Why A Blockchain Phone?

Giving a phone a blockchain element means that it has access to blockchain applications such as a crypto wallet, secure exchange access, encrypted communications and a P2P resource sharing ecosystems for payment and apps. It can also be used for cryptocurrency mining.

The built-in wallet for the HTC phone for example, will enable it to store bitcoin, Ethereum and other digital tokens.

Sirin Labs – The Finney Phone

The other blockchain smartphone, which is likely to be launched after HTC’s, is the ‘Finney’, named after the late bitcoin pioneer Hal Finney.

This smartphone, which also has a $1,000 price tag, has been described as an “ultra-secure blockchain smartphone”, and has been specifically designed to get around what Sirin Labs believe to be 2 main obstacles to mass market acceptance – security and user experience.

Sirin Labs even launched an initial coin offering / ICO (crowd funding from early backers of tokens for a new cryptocurrency) to fund the Finney. This resulted in over $157 million being raised.

The Big Advantage – The OS

Sirin claims that its big advantage with the Finney is not so much the phone, but more the Operating System (OS) that it claims, thanks to partnerships it is making, will soon be included in phones by other top OEM phone developers.

Security

In terms of how secure the phones are, the main question will be how both companies will keep sensitive cryptocurrency data secure. For example, unless a phone is in flight mode, there’s always a connection of some kind, and that offers a lot more attack surfaces than something like a USB stick that’s only occasionally connected.

Niche Product For Rich Enthusiasts?

Some critics have said that a blockchain smartphone is too much of a niche product that may just appeal to enthusiasts and speculators rather than a mass market, and that most people may struggle to understand what blockchain is and how / why they should use cryptocurrencies.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

For HTC, many see this as being a way for the company to find a way back into the smartphone market, where it’s been struggling in recent times, but this time with a differentiated product that is a market first, ahead of competitors.

For Sirin Labs, it could also be a way to get into a new section of the market ahead of the competition, but many are sceptical as to whether the Finney will get the mass market acceptance that Sirin Labs hopes.

Most business people in the UK, for example, may be unlikely to see why they would need a blockchain phone with a crypto-currency wallet as part of their daily working life. If they’re going to spend £1,000+, they may be more likely to opt for new models of more familiar phones with more standard features e.g. iPhone or Samsung Galaxy.