Skip to main content

The Ultimate Consumer Electronics Remote Control

Remote controls for a variety of consumer electronics in the home will start to get smarter as they're being redesigned for much greater utility. The new features and capabilities will help to redefine the inherent usability and value that these devices provide.

In 2013 10 percent of the remote controls shipped with major home consumer equipment will be RF-enabled. This is just the beginning of a new trend -- the quest for the ultimate remote control.

Over the next five years there will be a major surge in RF technology adoption for remote controls as vendors look to differentiate their products -- driving growth in smart home services, according to the latest market study by ABI Research.

While at the same time RF solutions continue to fall in price, implementations become more simplified and lower powers are achieved.

"RF technology has been considered for use in remote controls for many years but its adoption has been limited by a lack of perceived need among device vendors and prohibitive increases in associated costs when compared to IR solutions,” according to Peter Cooney, practice director at ABI Research.

However, over the last five years there has been an upswing in technology development and a rise in the need to make home consumer devices smart -- that has led to resurgence in using RF.

Initially proprietary RF technology was used but equipment vendors have been quick to understand the benefits of using a standardized RF technology in remote control design.

Three main interoperable standards are seeing adoption: Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and ZigBee RF4CE.

Each technology is seeing use in certain sections of the market with vendors choosing to implement a particular technology due to its individual strengths, be it ultra-low power, high bandwidth, or another important feature.

Bluetooth and ZigBee have been the most widely used technologies to date and are expected to see significant growth, with increasing competition from Wi-Fi as lower power solutions continue to be developed.

The remote control market represents a massive growth opportunity for wireless connectivity technology vendors. Over 3.2 billion remote controls will be shipped from 2013 to 2018 with flat panel TVs, set-top boxes, DVD or Blu-ray devices and games consoles alone.

Popular posts from this blog

Open Banking Usage to Grow by 470 Percent

The Open Banking business model has been advantageous for Third-Party Providers (TPPs), helping them to extend their offerings into other areas of financial services with new capabilities. Open Banking is also advantageous for traditional banking institutions, despite the perceived loss of custodianship over their data, by providing greater accessibility to more bank services. Furthermore, Open Banking can help serve Mobile Internet providers that are able to leverage it to create tailored services according to customers’ preferences and/or economic limitations. Open Banking Market Development Since traditional banking services are made more convenient by TPPs via greater data access, customers can proactively manage their finances and shape the development of new financial offerings. This is particularly noticeable in the realm of Digital Payments, where retail merchants and customers transact through eCommerce, which has the greatest number of use cases for Open Banking. These includ

Mobile Device Market Still Awaiting Recovery

The mobile devices market has experienced three years of unpredictable demand. The global pandemic, geopolitical pressures, supply chain issues, and macroeconomic headwinds have hindered the sector's consistent growth potential. This extremely challenging environment has dramatically affected both demand and supply chains. It has led to subsequent inflationary pressures, leading to a worsening global cost of living crisis suppressing growth and confidence in the sector. In tandem, mobile device industry stakeholders have become more cautious triggering market uncertainties. Mobile Device Market Development Operating under such a backdrop, the development of mobile device ecosystems and vendor landscapes have been impacted severely. Many of these market pressures persisted throughout 2022 and now into 2023, borne chiefly by the smartphone market. According to the latest worldwide market study by ABI Research, worldwide smartphone shipments in 2022 declined 9.6 percent Year-over-Year

Digital Talent Demand Exceeds Supply in Asia-Pac

Even the savviest CEO's desire for a digital transformation advantage has to face the global market reality -- there simply isn't enough skilled and experienced talent available to meet demand. According to the latest market study by IDC, around 60-80 percent of Asia-Pacific (AP) organizations find it "difficult" or "extremely difficult" to fill many IT roles -- including cybersecurity, software development, and data insight professionals. Major consequences of the skills shortage are increased workload on remaining digital business and IT employees, increased security risks, and loss of "hard-to-replace" critical transformation knowledge. Digital Business Talent Market Development Although big tech companies' layoffs are making headlines, they are not representative of the overall global marketplace. Ongoing difficulty to fill key practitioner vacancies is still among the top issues faced by leaders across industries. "Skills are difficul