The Ring Smart Video Doorbell captured the most consumer attention out of Smart Home devices last month. Amazon Echo followed with the next highest volume of consumer reviews, but the Nest 3rd Generation Learning Thermostat was the most loved of the month’s popular devices.
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Battery life has been a long standing issue for Wearable Technology, and despite steady improvements in technology it remains a large topic of conversation among wearable consumers today. Of the 18,609 consumer reviews for wearable devices we collected in March 2016, more than 11% mentioned battery life. There is slightly more positive feedback than negative, but complaints of quickly draining battery persist.
Cisco led mindshare in Software Defined Network (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) market discussion last week. While the company historically competes with VMware in the SDN space, CRN reported that partners working with both vendors “are now deploying Cisco and VMware’s SDN side-by-side and finding them more complementary than competitive.” This eliminates the “either-or decision between Cisco and VMware,” and creates opportunities to solve even more complex challenges. This announcement made a big impact on market discussion, accounting for nearly 25 percent of SDN and NFV Twitter conversation last Thursday.
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Smartphones make everything easier. A smartphone puts all your pictures, music, social media accounts, emails, and even credit cards right in the palm of your hand. With all this convenient digitalization, though, consumers do not discuss “payments” as much as other use cases. Based on over 75,000 smartphone consumer reviews collected from January 2016, consumers mention using a Smartphone for financial transactions in less than one percent of reviews. This small amount of discussion was led by buzz from Samsung Pay featured in Samsung’s newest models.
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A lot has changed since Steve Jobs publicly denounced the need for a stylus in his introduction of the iPhone in 2007. Namely, Apple released a stylus. While our fingers remain attached to us, and are therefore far less likely than a stylus to be lost or broken, Apple announced a stylus as an accessory for their business focused iPad Pro in their September 2015 keynote. The inclusion of a stylus with an Apple product clearly deviated from the company’s early messaging, but a stylus provides increased accuracy, needed for the advanced functions of the iPad Pro.
Since the release, iPad Pro consumers have been happy with the device, reporting higher delight for Apple’s iPad Pro than Microsoft’s Surface Pro 4. Analysis of recent consumer reviews about the stylus used with each tablet shows that consumers are also more satisfied with the Apple Pencil than the Surface Pen. The bars of the funnel below display the percentage of iPad Pro and Surface Pro 4 feedback in which consumers mentions of Stylus, Apple Pencil, and Surface Pen. Red is negative sentiment; blue is positive, and gray is neutral. While Microsoft consumers mention the stylus at a higher rate than Apple users, consumers report far more disappointment with the Surface Pro 4, with the majority of negative feedback mentioning broken tips and poor responsiveness. Apple’s branding is also stronger, as Apple users refer to the devices as an “Apple Pencil” more often than a generic “stylus,” while Microsoft users use “stylus” over “Surface Pen.”