Ex-Telecom Executives Team Up to Deliver ‘Inspired’ Products in Connected Devices
Product development company VSN Mobil -- stocked with former employees from General Dynamics, Motorola, Pininfarina and Samsung, among others -- is taking on GoPro in the action webcam market and plans to hit the U.S. market with a co-branded smartphone later in the year, Matt Gordon, vice president-strategic relationships, told Consumer Electronics Daily. VSN is funded by a private investor based in Singapore, a company spokesman said.
The action camera, a sub-$500 device roughly the size of a Red Bull can, takes 360-degree videos and has a built-in GPS sensor to tag locations. Rather than positioning the V.360 as a competitor to the GoPro, which had 45 percent of the camera market last year, according to NPD, VSN is marketing the device as a “companion” to the GoPro that enables users to see what’s going on behind them as well as in front. The device is even built to work with GoPro helmet mounts and tripods, the company said. “In some instances you might want to capture a little more,” Gordon said. Shooting on a motorcycle captures what’s in front as well as “your reaction to everything that’s going on around you,” he said. In a concert, the camera can capture what the band is doing, along with the crowd reaction, he said.
The video camera is targeted to the millennial and action sports enthusiast who “likes to document everything,” Gordon said. Prior to the introduction of the V.360, consumers who wanted the 360-degree perspective had to use a couple of lenses that stitched together images “but never really aligned,” Gordon said. On the V.360, the imager and mirror capture the 360-degree image simultaneously, relying on the processing power of a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and an Adreno graphics processor to capture the video, lay it flat, stabilize it, and then deliver it to a smartphone as a “shot glass image” that rotates on the display, Gordon said. Image quality is 1080 x 6480 resolution at up to 30 frames per second, according to specs, and built-in sensors include a barometer, accelerometer, altimeter and GPS, along with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The V.360 is to ship in October, he said.
As a product development company, VSN Mobil creates the idea for a product, designs it, handles mechanical and software engineering, and then sends it to Asia for manufacturing, Gordon said. Founding members have “15-plus years in telecom” at large companies where they couldn’t do the products they wanted to design due to bureaucracy and other issues, Gordon said. “We came together to make products that inspire us,” he said.
VSN’s first product, V.ALRT, launched in May as an affordable alternative to emergency monitoring devices such as Life Alert. The $59 pendant uses Bluetooth Smart to communicate with a smartphone in case of emergency and can be programmed to initiate calls and text messages from the smartphone to up to three preselected contacts. Unlike other alert products on the market, there’s no monthly fee. Gordon said the pendant, the size of a poker chip, can be worn in a pocket or around the neck and is suited to uses where users don’t have the time or ability to make a cellphone call, such as emergency situations with children or elderly parents. The company uses topical emergency situations in its product message, citing shootings and sexual assaults on school campuses.
Next, VSN Mobil is looking to a line of smartphones using partnerships that could include musicians and co-branded phones for rollout in Q4 into 2015, Gordon said. VSN’s mechanical team will create a design for the phone before sending it to an original design manufacturer in Asia that will “tweak” the phones to fit VSN’s model, he said.
"There’s still a very big opportunity” for developing smartphones for people “who can’t pay the price” of high-end models on the market today, Gordon said. “People want to get phones into the hands of their 9-, 10-year-old kid,” he said. Parents who want to get a phone for a child in school or a college son or daughter going away to college “don’t always want to spend $500-$600,” he said. The idea is for VSN to bring to market a smartphone that offers “peace of mind” and works well but “doesn’t have all the frills,” he said. The phones will fall in the sub-$100 range with retail price determined by carrier pricing, Gordon said.