From concept to market, it has never been this hard...

It isn't that difficult to come up with a great design concept. However, the process of taking a concept to market is considerably more challenging, as anyone with practical experience in electronics and hardware development can tell you.

Hardware product development cycle

A typical hardware product design cycle includes the following stages:
 

• Conceptualization: Design concepts are proposed on the basis of real or potential market demand. This is the "brainstorming" stage.
   
• Design prototype: After an appropriate development platform and technology path are selected, a protype is designed for the purpose of testing and verifying the design concept’s viability, functionality, and so forth.
   
• Commercialization: The market viability of the prototype is assessed according to criteria such as cost, appearance and safety. After these boxes have been ticked, the product is engineered and tested in small batches.
   
• Mass production: Next, the prototype must survive a production line run-in period and the developers must locate a reliable supply chain for mass production. It's not uncommon for products to fail at the mass production phase and turn into vaporware.
   
• Upgrades and iterations: If disruptive changes have occurred in the market, products must be upgraded or modified before they are launched, restarting the process (or parts of it) all over again.

If you've successfully navigated these stages, congratulations. You've crossed the vast and perilous ocean from "concept" to "market". During this "journey", there are many "reefs" that could still capsize your ship if you are not careful. The costs of "trial and error" are unimaginable for the software industry, where "failing and starting all over again" is the norm. This is also the reason why many new players entering the hardware industry fail to launch.

The new challenges of the IoT era

As we enter the IoT era, many feel that the process of "concept to market" has become even more difficult.

The Internet of Things is connecting more and more hardware products so that they are part of a larger network, versus individual entities. Therefore, product developers must have a clearer, comprehensive understanding of the whole IoT system instead of focusing solely on the design of a single product.

Since IoT products and applications are essentially "data driven", it is imperative that products are designed at their core to allow data to flow and be utilized in mid-to-high efficiency networks. In general, developers of IoT products inevitably face the following issues:

• Cloud integration: The key premise is connecting the IoT devices – akin to nerve endings – into the network, and gathering the data they've collected for processing in the "brain" – the cloud.
• Cloud services: Results processed in the cloud must be transmitted and returned to devices at the edge of IoT networks via methods such as over-the-air (OTA) transmission, almost like providing a "service" for end-users. During product design, it's necessary to ensure that cloud services receive codes and commands seamlessly as well as utilize the appropriate human machine interface (HMI) to convert messages that can be "read and understood" by the end-user.
• Computing architecture: More and more people are realizing that relocating all computing to the IoT network to the cloud is not an optimal solution. Ideally, computing should be evenly distributed between the cloud and the edge. This allocation of computational resources is not conducted locally on a single device, but requires consideration of the whole network architecture to fully utilize the entire network's computing resources, such as AI machine learning applications with the model "cloud training and edge inference". This is a relatively new issue that many developers are now facing.
• Security: Similarly, once a device is connected to the IoT network, security is not restricted to a single device but must comply with the security principles of the whole network. There are many aspects of this complex scenario that traditional hardware developers have not yet grasped.

Clearly, once a hardware product becomes part of the "Internet", it cannot continue on a one-dimensional product development path during the process of concept to market. Instead, new dimensions of "IoT" must be laid over this foundation to form a more complicated two-dimensional "puzzle". Leaving out any pieces of the puzzle during product development will inevitably lead to future problems.

Support ecosystem of IoT product development

The increased complexity of IoT product design has forced developers to become more versatile. Ideally, engineers should be "jacks of all trades" – with a mastery of hardware, software, edge, and the cloud. However, that is an unrealistic expectation. For practical reasons, many developers use external resources to tap a comprehensive design ecosystem.

Not surprisingly, every ambitious technology supplier is focusing on building comprehensive IoT design ecosystems. Players industry-wide are working towards this common goal.

Chip manufacturers are a key player in building IoT design ecosystems. Their close contacts with core hardware resources at the base layer of products allows them to build a "circle" that includes both resources and partners. This is especially true for design resources, such as hardware/software development tools and design services, in the concept-to-prototype phases.

Cloud computing (such as AWS, Microsoft, and Alibaba Cloud) and whole device companies (such as Apple) are concurrently establishing their own ecosystems. Being "closer" to the end user, as well as having a huge company and numerous industry resources, have become distinct advantages. Not surprisingly, these companies always have a strong presence at developer conferences. However, the ecosystems of these types of companies are primarily "soft" and deal more in top-layer applications.

In addition to the hardware/software ecosystems mentioned above, technology distributors are shaping new and emerging IoT design ecosystems. Distributors excel in comprehensive supply chain management services, having worked in their respective target industries and served their clients for many years. As industry insiders, their cumulative technical expertise and up-to-date market outlooks put them in an ideal position to offer integrated upstream-to-downstream resources in the IoT industry chain. Therefore, technology distributors can quickly build comprehensive ecosystems and provide clients with all-round support.

Avnet is a prime example. As the diagram below shows, the company is able to match clients with the resources they need, be it for product development or IoT solutions. Clients can simply "connect" to any branch of the ecosystem to access the resources they require – anywhere, anytime.

Figure 1: Avnet IoT ecosystem

In other words, in the IoT era you are no longer giving the end-user a single product, but a suite of services based on IoT systems. This is a critical factor in determining product or service quality. A great partner will extend a full suite of ecosystem resources to their clients, not just their internal development capabilities. Clearly, your choice of partner is crucial. As a leading technology supplier, Avnet is perfectly positioned to guide on the challenging journey from "concept to market".