Amazons Echo Dot is on its fourth generation.
And within each of those generations there are myriad iterations and variations on the basic design.
And thats just the Dot.
In all, there are dozens of different Echo devices.
And each one is either a newly-introduced product or an iteration of a previous generation.
And there will be more next year and more the year after that.
Thats what the status quo looks like in smart gadgets.
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AI is a consumer-facing tech now.
This requires a reexamining of the iPhone model.
Weve become accustomed to yearly announcements from big tech.
Netflix was founded in the same year that DVD players went on sale in the US.
Especially if we reach a hardware iteration that proves difficult to improve upon.
When Netflix was founded it was a company that mailed DVDs to people.
When Amazon was founded it sold books.
Facebook started off as a Hot or Not for Harvard.
The future is now
Earlier this year wecovered the launchof a startup called Whisper.
Its an artificial intelligence as a service (AIaaS) company that makes hearing devices.
But it is an interesting one because its ripe for disruption.
Whispers one of a handful of companies trying to build a better hearing aid.
Where its doing things differently is in how it sells those hearing aids.
Traditional hearing aids tend to cost between one and five thousand dollars.
Whisper leases its devices to consumers as part of a monthly subscription fee.
In essence, consumers are paying a subscription fee for the AI-powered software running on the unit.
Whisper bundles the hardware and software offerings with updates, customer service, and visits to a local physician.
Whisper just sent itsthird major AI updateto consumers earlier this week.
This was all seamless for the users.
The big picture
Neural asked Whispers CEO, Andrew Song, how the company viewed AIaaS.
But history tells us its bound to happen.
It took less than a century for physical media to be almost entirely replaced by digital media.
CDs and DVDs only made sense until it was more lucrative to sell subscriptions online.
