2019 Minsky Award for Tech Innovation Goes to…

It should be no surprise to anyone who has been around me for the past six months that the winner of the 2019 Minsky Award for Innovation is the Oculus QuestThe criteria of the annual Minsky Award are simple Minsky me must think it39s cool OK there39s a bit more rigor involved The product or service must not only be innovative but it also must have staying power and the ability to provide a highutility service Plus it needs to be affordable and of a quality that it won39t need to be replaced every yearI named the Minsky Award in honor of my grandparents Sophie and Abe who started me down this techfocused path when they gifted me my first computer amp8212 an original Apple II amp8212 for my Bar Mitzvah This award could easily be called quotThe Jetsonsquot because anything that definitively gets us closer to the lifestyle of George and Jane has a real shot of winning Sony39s Aibo may be an improvement from the one a decade ago but it39s no Astro so not even close to a contenderPast winners of the Minsky Award are2018 Ring Doorbell Pro2017 WeMo Smart Plug2016 Tile2015 Amazon Echo2014 Xbox One2013 Roku 3For the past five years I39ve wanted to bestow the Minsky Award to a VR product Truly seriously wanted to amp8212 but none of the VR products quite measured up Google39s Cardboard certainly was affordable and mass but cardboard origami is not VR and frankly probably was a detriment to the adoption rate by providing a lower value experience Samsung Gear VR was cool as a first step but the reliance on your phone39s battery coupled with a passive experience didn39t meet the Minsky Award thresholdThe original Oculus Rift was and will go down in history as one of the biggest milestones in the long road to true VR However it was clearly still in beta mode when officially released in 2016 The high initial 599 price point coupled with the need to be tethered to a topoftheline computer generally priced in the 1500 range simply meant that while the Rift was a sign that virtual reality had arrived it was only truly accessible to affluent earliest adopters So sorry no MinskyThe lack of scale for Oculus Rift or the HTC Vive which was arguably a better firstgen product did not indicate a lack of demand for a quality VR product it was just following the path of every revolutionary technology product released ever The Oculus Quest however singlehandedly moved virtual reality past Gartner39s quotTrough of Disillusionmentquot to the quotSlope of EnlightenmentquotIf you aren39t familiar with the Quest it39s the product that every VR enthusiast wishes had been the first release It39s an easytouse device for the layperson It39s far more affordable with a 399 price tag Simply put on the headset connect to WiFi sketch out a quotGuardianquot for your room amp8212 which pops up a grid in the VR world when you are about to bump into something amp8212 and you39re on No wires The headset is reasonably comfortable and controllers are responsive and accurateA recent upgrade allows gameexperience developers to allow you to use your hands as controllers using distinct gestures The key differentiator is six degrees of freedom 6DOF With 6DOF you are no longer a passive observer or limited player You can roam freely around any virtual world literally no strings attached within the parameters of the Guardian Suddenly you become a character in the story as ILMxLab so brilliantly demonstrated in the marquis title for Quest Vader Immortal a Star Wars story released in three parts 15 per part This freedom to roam radically enhances the immersiveness of the experienceThe Quest is simply the best 400 that I have ever spent on technology I have had zero buyer39s remorse and every single person I39ve shown it to has walked away wanting to purchase one amp8212 including friends that were previously skeptics The ability to play ping pong with my friend in Israel hunt down some zombies with my childhood friends even though we are dispersed throughout the US and watch a football game via PlutoTV on a large screen with friends who are too lazy to leave home amp8212 speaking to each other as if we were sitting in the same row at the game amp8212 is priceless The only regret that I have about the Quest is that more of you don39t have it so I can share these experiences with youThat however is changingAccording to Nielsen39s SuperData research Oculus Quest sold about 180000 units in Q3 2019 bringing lifetime sales to about 400000 preholiday Two weeks following the launch of Quest parent company Facebook announced that it had generated more than 5 million worth of content sales And during Facebook39s Q3 2019 earnings report the company announced that nonadvertising revenue had increased to 269 million a 43 percent yearoveryear increase that was attributed to QuestYes these numbers are still small however the Oculus Quest sold out after Black Friday We don39t know if Facebook severely underestimated demand or if there was a true spike We39ll learn more in the next few months But we do know that app developers are making money and a true VR content marketplace is well on its way to being createdSo the 2019 Minsky Award for Innovation goes to the Oculus Quest for bringing the virtual reality world from the brink of being yet another overhyped technology that failed to catch on with consumers to an exciting immersive truly 21stcentury media platform that should thrive over the next decadeBut wait that39s not allSo what tech will we be obsessing over in 2020 It will be the year of 5G devices now that the network rollout of 5G is well underway We39ll also see the next generation of a foldable phone from Samsung and perhaps others Augmented reality will still be a thing and perhaps we39ll see Snapchat39s third generation of Spectacles gain some tractionAlthough I hope it comes out in 2020 it still appears that Apple39s AR vision product won39t be out until 2021 amp8212 although c39mon how perfect would the marketing be for Apple releasing glasses touting a new way of seeing things in the year quot2020quot In the meantime be on the lookout for AR disruptors such as China39s Nreal which will be releasing 500 consumer lightweight AR glasses in early 2020For televisions the first commercially available NextGen TV sets aka ATSC 30 will hit the market NextGen TV will allow consumers to get overtheair 4K HDR broadcasts with twoway connectivity It will enable advertisers to begin serving addressable TV to overtheair viewersAdditionally expect to see further integration and more SKUs of voicecontrolled TVs eg Alexa Google Assistant and perhaps something new from Samsung called NeonSpeaking of voice next week we39ll see hundreds of new devices integrated or controllable via Alexa Google Assistant and Siri I predict that 2020 should be the year we see far more marketers embrace voice as a real medium since consumer penetration of voice has breezed past the historical 30 percent benchmarkFinally 2020 will be the year that streaming services severely shake up the traditional television model The glimpse of what we39ve seen with Apple TV CBS All Access and Disney will go fullon disruption as DiscoveryBBC HBOMax Peacock Quibi and many others hit the marketHappy New Year and may this year bring us all health prosperity and the 2020 vision to use these amazing tools for the good of every citizen on the planetFor 2019 that is allClick the social buttons to share this story with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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2019 Minsky Award for Tech Innovation Goes to…

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Jeff Minsky

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