Logitech CEO outlines potential future of mouse and keyboard
During a recent episode of The Verge’s Decoder podcast, Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber shed some insight into the company’s take on one of its most important products. Saying that “the mouse built this house,” Faber shares the planning behind a Forever Mouse, a premium product that the company hopes will be the last one you ever have to buy. There’s also talk of a subscription-based service and a deeper focus on AI.
Taking inspiration from pretty watches, Logitech believes that with a premium enough device, be it a keyboard or mouse, consumers will be less likely to want to replace it.
When asked about the Forever Mouse she saw, Faber states that “[It] was a little heavier, had great software and services that were constantly updated, and it was beautiful.”
But while some consumers may like the idea of a premium mouse that receives constant updates, I doubt many will appreciate the price. Nilay Patel, host of Decoder and editor-in-chief of The Verge, opined that the mouse could cost around $200. Acknowledging that it’s a challenging business model, Faber suggested that software becomes even more important when questioning how to define the appropriate service model.
“I’m intrigued by a forever mouse or a forever video conferencing solution that just updates with software and builds a business model around that,” he says.
Another piece of the Forever Mouse puzzle is software. Logitech uses its Options Plus software that basically guides people through the process of creating prompts to interact with the AI. But Faber says this is just the beginning:
“No, I think we’re at the very beginning of AI and [over time], it will become multimodal and we won’t even need to create prompts because it will know what prompts we need. Things will evolve exactly as they evolve. Who knows? But I think the human will be a limiting factor. Human hands, human brain. I suspect we’ll still need interfaces between humans and technology. They may not look exactly like what Logitech sells today, but I think the future of interfaces between humans and technology is really very bright.”