You still consider mobile sensors (built-in sensors in mobile phones) to be a far future?
Why so? Nowadays one can find a number of commercially successful mobile sensors, an example being a built-in accelerometer in iPhone.

With this simple silicon plate Apple managed to establish a whole industry of commercially successful mobile games and applications, worth billions of dollars.

So  iPhone users don’t imagine their lives without this sensor anymore as well as request Apple to introduce new sensors (such as RFID-reader etc). Day by day the number of such examples keeps on growing.

What is so interesting about mobile sensors?

For customers:

For service providers:

For producers of sensors:

“First birds” (mobile sensor start-ups)

During last year not so many projects were announced on the market, therefore we can list almost all of them:

- VeriFone,  iPhone Secure Payments Solution;

- Mophie,  iPhone Credit Card Reader;

- Diabetes Meter Mates for  PC/Phone to Track Trends;

- Fitbit;

- The iCarte – a RFID Sensor for iPhone;

- l5 remote,  iPhone remote control;

Interesting prototypes:

- iPhone + Arduino + Heartrate Monitor = HumanAPI;

- Radar from Nokia in Your Pocket;

Advanced concepts:

- Nokia Eco Sensor Concept;

As you can see, new sensors appear generally in such sectors as “Entertainment”, “Commerce” and “Healthcare” (mHealth trend).
Probably, these sectors will remain to be the most perspective for producing new mobile sensors in the future.

Why are there so few new projects?

- this sector received public attention only 1-2 years ago; it is impossible to produce a large number of qualitative projects for such a short period of time;

- venture companies are still reluctant in financing the start-ups for producing new mobile sensors…just because of newness of the sector and lack of experts, capable to adequately assess the risks and advantages of launching the projects;

- production of mobile sensors requires involvement of a large range of specialists from various fields (electronics, chemistry, statistics) as opposed to purely software projects; this makes the general management to be more difficult as well as adds new risks;

- unlike pure software projects, the projects with mobile sensors require a more complex sales and logistics (production, warehousing, delivery, warranty, merchandise returns etc);

- producers of sensors do not know how to develop and sell sensors on mass markets, since the majority of them operates, generally, on B2B markets (it is needed to re-organize the research and development, marketing, sales etc);

However, notwithstanding all the difficulties mentioned at above, one can confidently say that in a few years it will be the sensors which will become the main force of development of various IT-services, since they will generate the main share of information and will allow a person (and humanity) to explore the world in more details.

So the main profit will probably go NOT to producers of sensors, but to providers of new services, created through the marketing reconsideration of perspectives of the tandem “mobile phone” + “mobile sensor”.

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Author:

Vitaliy Goncharuk,

Managing Partner, The VIactivity LLC

http://www.linkedin.com/in/vactivity