Over the last two years, I have heard this story many times:
"We had to spend a lot of time (several months or even a year) to have a prototype, and it is not sexy or profitable."
The technical teams have trouble meeting the marketing requirements. Nobody is fulfilled here, neither the R&D team nor Marketing nor the Top Manager.
In many IoT projects, completion beyond the deadlines are common, but that is not the only cost. There is an extra investment of time, resources, and money. All the teams have spent all their energy in the creation and prototyping phases.
Then it is up to the marketing team to perform miracles to try to sell something that is late and not that wonderful.
In the meantime, a competitor has also launched a new product. Best case, the product is less attractive. On the contrary, when his product is much funnier, sexier and cheaper…oops! You’ve just lost your market, your time and your money.
So what solution do we have?
We could imagine a tool, a software platform integrating all the user interface, IoT and embedded requirements. The engineers would not waste their time prototyping only but rather focus on increasing the value of the product and improving the user experience.
Wouldn't the greatest solution be able to simulate the device on engineers' computers? Enabling developers and marketing team to work side by side. Getting instant feedback in order to reach their common goals and quickly validate specifications.
If both the hardware and the software can start development at the same time by using a PC simulator, then the software team can write and test prototype firmware and can know the exact hardware resources needed (quantity of memory and battery), making it as cheap as possible. If this software platform is optimized to run on any cost-effective hardware, like microcontrollers starting at 1$ the devices BOM would be greatly reduced.
The marketing teams will expect the device to have the features and the look & feel of a smartphone or a tablet, being able to connect to the cloud and be updated by downloading apps from the user's smartphone.
The top managers would like that it's run on very cheap hardware and that the development and prototyping go very quickly hence shortening the time-to-market.
etc, etc...
Maybe you are thinking a solution like this doesn't exist. Wrong!
Come visit our booth to learn more and see a demonstration:
Mobile World Congress in Barcelona Spain - February 26 through March 1
Embedded World in Nuremberg Germany - February 27 through March 1
Otherwise, I am available for a call to explore together if we can be on any help to your next IoT project.
Thanks for reading!
