Trendspotting: Tech Giants Want to Find Your Lost Items

NewsWire: 9/18/21

• The “finding lost items” market is heating up. Tracker maker Tile just raised another $40 million to help the company compete with Apple’s AirTags. (TechCrunch)
• NH: When lost-item tracker Tile launched to the public in 2013, it quickly became the leader in its field. The New York Times recently observed that the company has “become synonymous with trackers in the way Kleenex is with facial tissue.”
• But since April, it has been facing a major new competitor: Apple. With the launch of AirTags, Apple vaulted past Tile to become the tracker maker with the biggest crowd-finding network. Tile has sold around 40 million trackers, while Apple has nearly a billion devices available to ping.
• Apple isn’t the only tech behemoth that’s getting into Bluetooth tracking. This year, Samsung also launched its own tracker (SmartTag) for use with its Galaxy phones. People are sticking these trackers on their keys, purses, bikes, pets, and in their children’s shoes.
• Is it any wonder that personal tracking has become the next hot market? These trackers are small, portable, and not too expensive (around $30). Among Americans already accustomed to constant surveillance, they have elicited few raised eyebrows. Gen-X parents have familiarized their Homelander children with such technologies since they were toddlers. Unlike the microchips they stick into pets, these devices can be pinged on demand. (See “Colleges Surveilling Students Through Their Own Phones” and “Don't Go to That College Party...Your Parents Are Tracking You.”)

Did you know?

• Cut the Cord? Not in Europe. Over the past decade, the share of U.S. households with cable TV has fallen more than 30 percentage points. But on the other side of the Atlantic, subscriptions are going in the opposite direction. This year, the share of households in Britain who subscribe to pay TV is set to overtake America’s share (around 56%). In France and Germany, this has already happened. Europe’s attachment to cable can be attributed to several different factors: First, many popular shows in the U.S. have migrated to studios’ individual streaming platforms, such as Peacock and HBO Max. But they remain only on cable in Europe, where most of these streamers don’t exist yet. The ones that do have largely partnered with satellite and cable services instead of competing with them. Paramount+, for instance, will be available next year in six countries to subscribers of British cable giant Sky. Cable subscriptions are also considerably cheaper in Europe, making them easier on the wallet.