Can you guess what was the best-selling item during the 2016 holiday season?
Hello, Alexa.
According to Forbes, the Echo and the Echo Dot blew the doors off of Amazon, the world’s largest Internet-based retailer. Amazon Echo, a hands-free speaker you control with your voice, connects to the Alexa Voice Service to instantly play music, provide information, news, weather and more.
Echo is just one example of how the Internet of Things, or IoT, is becoming as commonplace as the kitchen sink. And North Texas sits squarely in the center of this next information revolution, thanks to its decades-long commitment to building a community of forward-thinking, technology innovators.
When Texas Instruments chose Richardson for its corporate campus in 1956, it was the beginning of what would eventually become the Telecom Corridor, known world-wide for its ecosystem of highly talented people, research-oriented universities and savvy investors.
Kenneth Lowe, an IoT specialist with Gremalto, says that this regional connectivity is driving the next generation of technology innovation.
“Everyone knows people from TI, Northern Telecom, Ericsson. That’s where the network of people was built in the 1970s through the 1990s,” he said. “The start-ups in the ‘90s were telecom companies… These guys are the angels now, investing in new IoT technology that is changing the direction of the conversation.”
Today, the North Texas region is one of the largest technology centers in the United States with global leaders in telecom, IT, biomedical and nanotechnology. The Telecom Corridor alone employs 230,000 scientists, engineers and architects, all who are shifting the way our everyday lives will play out.
To read the full story on IoT, check out the latest issue of NTX Magazine here.