US ventures began to have success in the market for "Internet home electronics," which assumes Internet-based use.
Typical examples of such products include "Flip Video," a small camcorder that allows users to easily upload video clips to YouTube, and "chumby," a widget display device that allows users to customize and display news, weather forecasts and photos, for example, that can be found on the Internet. These products are drawing interest, highlighting their clear concepts, simple and convenient operability and low prices.
It has been said that success is generally difficult for venture companies engaged in consumer electronics even in the US as they need at least single-digit-more capital for foundation, compared with ventures that offer software and services.
Their success is even more difficult in Japan. That is because the supply of funding for ventures is limited and it is difficult to hire superior embedded software engineers, which have already been corralled by major companies.
Cerevo Inc (formerly named YOMEI) is a venture company that intends to overcome such difficulties and start selling Internet home electronics in Japan. The company began operation in earnest at the end of May 2008. Its president is Takuma Iwasa, who is also known as writer "Waren Osho (Priest Waren)" of a popular blog site titled "Jump Over the Chasm!"
Nikkei Electronics interviewed him about a "net digital camera" under development that is expected to be Cerevo's first product and the difficulty to run a consumer electronics venture in Japan (interviewer: Naoki Asakawa).
Q: Tell us about the concept of your "net digital camera" under development.
Iwasa: It's the link with the Internet. This camera will transmit every photo it has taken to the server via wireless LAN. And all the photo sorting and editing will be done on the Internet.
Users don't have to send photos to their PCs every time they take photos, while also avoiding the risk of losing data due to HDD failure. Also, photos stored in the server can be transmitted to blog and SNS sites (including mixi) with easy operation.
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