<div>Chipmaker Freescale, a dominant player in the automobile market, says that start-ups will disrupt business models to make the internet-of-things a reality. Their thread networking protocol is now being made available for start-ups that want to play in the connected household business. Simply put, their chips allow several devices to interact with the cloud as one whole.</div><div> </div><div>"The start-ups can use these tools to build applications on the android platform, there will be 50 billion wearable devices in five years," says John Dixon, director of corporate marketing at Freescale Semiconductor Inc. He adds that today standards are created by different industry verticals and that Freescale can provide chips that can enable every industry based on their standards.</div><div> </div><div>The company is part of several global start-up community boards which are trying to build micro-controllers that can work in the nascent wearable technology space. "Power consumption and battery efficiency are on the key aspects that start-ups are working on while adding more sensors," says James Bates, senior vice president and general manager for analog and sensors at Freescale Semiconductor. Today an average wearable is retailing at $100, which offers services on top of the product separately. This may currently be very expensive for the average individual and may be catered to only people who have a fashion and lifestyle element attached to owning a wearable device.</div><div> </div><div>However, once the Chinese and Taiwanese fab companies figure out that the hardware is being built for different verticals they will mass produce to bring the costs of the hardware down and approach clients on their own. By then device hardware will be commoditised. It is in the software and services that Indian start-ups will need to create intellectual property in.</div><div> </div><div>Today there aren't many engineering community boards in India but there are several start-ups attempting to build the connected car eco-system and are also building services on top of commoditised wearable technology.<br /> </div><div>An ABI Research estimated that the number of wearable computing device shipments will reach 485 million units by 2018. All these wearable devices along with cars and homes will be sharing massive amounts of data on the cloud.<br /><br />Self-tracking apps and services are by their nature designed to collect and analyse personal information. A study done by Symantec on Quantified-self highlights that 52 per cent of apps examined did not make available privacy policies for the users. Privacy policies should preferably be understandable even by those not in the legal profession and must be shown to users before they sign up for a service so that they can make a considered choice before using it.</div><div> </div><div>"There will be several new technology companies in the coming years and we already see different pieces coming together to create these businesses in the IOT world," says Dixon of Freescale.</div><div> </div>
