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Consumers Prepare For An Internet Of Very Pointless Things

This article is more than 8 years old.

This time last year Gartner said that by 2022 a typical family home, in a mature affluent market, could contain several hundred smart objects by 2022. Several hundred. Thinking over this for a moment you can pinpoint a few of the usual suspects and brands already that may grace a home in 2015; for example a couple of smart TVs, a smattering of Sonos speakers for multi-room musical enjoyment, a Nest thermostat, consoles, tablets, and so forth.

Smart domestic product categories are manifold and range from media and entertainment, such as consoles and TVs, to appliances, such as cookers and washing machines, to transport technologies, security and environmental controls, and healthcare and fitness equipment. - Gartner

But if we examine the market as it is today apathy is rife because the current trend by OEM companies is to "stick a chip in it" in order to connect it to the internet, without any real value to the consumer. In fact, the only ones getting excited by the Internet of Things are the vendors.

Take Samsung's offerings at the recent IFA exhibition. Samsung now have a new SmartThings hub to connect the many devices in your home. There were examples like;

  • The smart oven that waited for you to be on your way home before starting to heat your dinner.
  • The home that switched on lights as you approached.
  • Samsung also added a touch of personality to their SmartThings platform; you can start the morning by texting the app "good morning", and your house will bid you farewell as you leave.

The immediate response to these was - Why ? (especially the last one!)

What software and hardware vendors fail to answer is why is their connected device necessary for a consumer to own and what value does it ultimately bring ? Consider the 'smart oven' above. It won't actually prepare the food for you the night before. You have to do that. So the convenience is.... ?

A report in 2014 by Nielson revealed that 1% surveyed (from a base of 2000 respondents) felt strongly that the smart products they’ve seen or heard about have just been gimmicky, and companies need to work harder to make these products relevant to their lives, and that 58% felt strongly that they won’t upgrade to smart products unless they offer real value and not just novelty.

In another research report commissioned by Bluetooth SIG, the results revealed that the hype over IOT and the Smart Home has yet to materialise for so many connected devices into actual demand from consumers. Instead, the devices consumers find most appealing are highly solutions that allow them to control their environment, such as smart heating/thermostats, smart lighting and smart security/monitoring devices. But while there is apparent demand the costs are still too prohibitive for mainstream adoption. Smart bulbs that you can control via an app are still costly compared to energy saving bulbs you can just switch off at the wall. An average home in the UK can potentially run to over 15 or so light bulbs, but how many would a consumer realistically want to be smartly enabled and connected to the internet ? And again, just what is the value they're going to receive from controlling them remotely ?

Even the Amazon Dash Button is an experiment in the completely unnecessary. Here is a device that adds no value to a home that a 1-Click-Buy via the Amazon app can't fulfil (and potentially give more choice and offer).

In a similar survey in the UK, 47% of consumers didn't want more technology in their lives at this point in time, and 45% think owning so many devices just means another thing to worry about when something goes wrong.

And it does.

Hive by British Gas was hit by a DNS outage in March this year which meant customers were unable to control their heating remotely.

"...the last two days has seen our Hive service hit by an unexpected outage, caused by our Domain Name Service (DNS) provider. The knock on effect meant that some customers weren’t able to use Hive remotely during this time which is absolutely not the experience we want you to have."

And if connectivity to the internet becomes a major flaw for most devices, then when it can't be achieved what happens next for objects like a Lumma connected pill dispenser ? Or the connected toilet roll holder from RollScout ?

Add to the general apathy the fears over security and data privacy then owning several hundred connected devices by 2022 seems a massive stretch of the imagination the way the current market is currently treating IOT. In 2014 Context Security released details about how it was able to hack into the wi-fi network of one brand of network-enabled smart bulb, and control the lights remotely. "We bought some light bulbs and examined how they talked to each other and saw that one of the messages was about the username and password," said Michael Jordon, Research Director at Context. "By posing as a new bulb joining the network we were able to get that information," he added.

Similarly, Jesus Molina, a cyber security expert, was staying at the St Regis Shenzhen, which provides guests with an iPad and digital "butler" app to control features of the room including the thermostat, lights, and television. Molina realised how vulnerable the system was, and wrote a piece of code spoofing the guest iPad so he could control the room from his laptop. After some investigation, and three room changes, he discovered that the network addresses of each room and the devices within them were sequential, allowing him to write a script to potentially control every one of the hotel's more than 250 rooms.

A report by Altimeter Group found that 45% of respondents express very low trust or no trust at all that companies were using their connected device data securely and in ways that protected their privacy, and Park Associates published research stating that 70% of smart device owners are concerned about unauthorized access to their home control devices as well as to the data generated by these devices.  If the actions of Molina are any indication, then owning something like a Samsung SmartHub is a centralised point for someone to potentially take control of connected items in your home, and also the data generated by them.

But fear not, because even here companies like Norton and Symantec  could cashing in on anti-virus solutions for connected objects like fridges and toasters.

There is another factor to consider which consumers are becoming more disengaged with: Notifications. Our lives are constantly interrupted by apps and other services vying for our attention and action. Only last year Accengage analyzed data from five billion push notifications sent to 150 million app users (worldwide) from January to December 2014, across 12 industries, including e-commerce, media, travel and retail. They found that only 6% of users actually engaged with the notification received despite opting into the service in the first place. Add to the noise connected devices around the home, at work, for leisure, all calling for your attention, and again you understand why consumers are apathetic towards IOT and connected objects in their current form.

If the numbers are to be believed by Cisco, society faces 50 billion connected devices by the year 2020, with a $17 trillion opportunity for organisations to take advantage of. But as the Internet of Things and connected consumer devices hype trains continue to power ahead every month, for the average consumer it could be 50 billion too much.

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