Bosch – home, mobility, community at CES 2014
January 2014 – At the kickoff of CES 2014, Bosch lead off with an early morning press conference hosted by their Chairman Werner Struth and featuring Tanvir Afri of the Bosch Automotive group and Juergen Peters, President of Bosch North America. The theme for Bosch is the triad of addressing Home, Mobility and Community. The company is addressing these markets with a new focus in their R&D planning. They are committed to allocating 50% of their R&D to Ecofriendly products and aspects of products along with 20% of their R&D on Safety related products and aspects.
To address these, they are expanding and enhancing their products in the semiconductor, sensors, MEMS and power electronics sectors. These sensors include the advanced audio technology from Acoustica which is leading the industry in MEMS microphones for the cell phone market. These parts are being paired with the BME280 multi-sensor which is a pressure, humidity and temperature measurement unit also for the cell phone market to enable the home health and fitness applications market.
These sensor products are driving a connected applications base, and the breakthroughs in this area have caused Bosch to form a new business unit / company under the Bosch umbrella called Bosch Connected Devices and Solutions. The customer facing view is the “health buddy web”. It is focusing on components, software solutions & apps and hardware solutions/reference designs for the personal health and fitness marketplace.
In the area of personal mobility, the Bosch solutions are focusing on the $40B automotive solutions business. The components and subsystems are targeting the drivers assist aspects of autos. These include freeway driving systems such as lane change, adaptive cruise control, auto breaking, and auto start/stop for the engine for increased efficiency. The systems are all being controlled by normal voice input control.
The company has also made an increased and formal support to the community. They have created the Bosch Community funds which is an annual $3M fund to help members and education in the communities that use Bosch products.
