Consumer electronics have come a long way since OIN member IBM introduced the world’s first smartphone in 1992. The past decade has seen a number of laudable developments in the market driven by 5G, sensors, machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI), face recognition, virtual reality (VR) and blockchain. Technology and innovative products. Today, everything from home appliances, wearables, robots and TVs to medical devices and cars is “smart”. According to Design News magazine, consumer-focused applications, operating systems (OS) and consumer electronics such as Netflix, Mac OS, NetApp, Nintendo Switch, Panasonic TVs, PlayStation 4, Trivago and Facebook’s What’s App, which is considered to be “8 major products developed based on open source”.

According to Statista, economists predict that by 2030, there will be 15.9 billion connected devices worldwide; by 2022, the global electronics market is expected to exceed $1.2 trillion. Smartphones are expected to continue to dominate the consumer electronics category from 2022 to 2031, with Asia Pacific continuing to be the dominant region. In other words, the future is bright for consumer electronics, and Open Source Software (OSS) continues to drive innovation that continues to change the world as we know it.

The growth of the market is driven by various factors, including the increasing penetration of the Internet, the increasing demand for electronic products in the daily life of consumers across the globe, and the growing middle-class population across the globe. The increasing awareness of the advantages of electronic products is also an important factor strongly supporting the growth of the market. The growing popularity of the Home Connect concept is likely to drive demand for “smart” home devices
, such as appliances, HVAC systems and smart security systems, in the coming years.

As a result, people want more choice in hardware features, software applications, and innovative user interfaces (UIs). To meet these demands, and to address digital technology changes in embedded components such as system-on-chip (SoC) processors, industry manufacturers are turning to OSS and hardware platforms to collaborate and innovate faster. Developers are also working on building a larger open source community, which will also generate new relationships, foster knowledge, create new opportunities, and ultimately create innovative consumer products more efficiently, including 8K TVs, electronics, self-driving cars, Robots and personalized medical devices, etc. All of these products rely heavily on open source.

Open source powers the consumer electronics devices of many OIN members. 10 examples are listed below.