Technology

Credit: uCloudlink Group

Once the hottest tech item in town, smartphone sales have been slowing down, and shipments only expanded by around 1% in recent quarters, according to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker. But flat sales open room for experimentation, and a new generation of novel and creative smartphone designs are set to attract new customers.

Consumers across the world spend around $8bn annually on digital gadgets for their pets, from automatic feeders to GPS collars and heartbeat sensors. Launched in January, the PetPhone uses cell networks to connect a pet with its owners with a collar-borne device that provides two-way voice communication, location information, and wellness metrics. Attach the PetCam accessory to see what’s happening around the pet. This is not a startup gimmick, and is part of the PetPogo product line from uCloudlink, a global data, connectivity, and virtual SIM giant. If it can sell these gadgets to the customers of its roughly 400 network operating partners, the PetPhone could become a runaway success.