Galaxy Gear, Galaxy Note 3, Toq and more…

Samsung was kind enough to invite me to their roll-out of Galaxy Gear and Galaxy Note 3, but I had no plans to be at IFA Berlin, and I couldn’t justify the time to get out to New York.  I did catch some of the roll-out live on my computer…a few misc. thoughts:

• Who was that guy with the weird glasses? Was that a European thing, or jab at Google Glass?
• I remembered a few years back when the first Note was introduced. Everyone thought it was crazy big. Samsung was right! Samsung won, and foresaw the direction of the mobile phone.
• Does anybody think it’s a coincidence that Google’s acquisition of WIMM (smart Android watch) and Qualcomm’s move into the Smartwatch space with Toq all happen in the same week as Samsung intros its Galaxy Gear watch?
• S -Voice is in Note 3 and Galaxy Gear! Great move for Samsung! Wearables, with their smaller displays and almost non-existent keyboards, definitely need speech recognition as part of a multi-modal interface.
• Seems like Steve Jobs had it right about the close integration of consumer hardware and software. Everyone seems to be following in Apple’s footsteps. Google/Moto, Microsoft/Nokia, and now Qualcomm, with Toq, are getting into consumer hardware. Although maybe Toq is just an attempt to promote their display tech from Mirasol
• Qualcomm is expanding its business models these days. Along with their move into smart watches, they also recently announced they are licensing chip IP. They even have their own in-house speech recognizer. I wonder what Samsung thinks of Qualcomm’s announcement of Toq?