Take a moment to look around you and count the number of things that can connect to the internet. There should be at least five or six electronics, like a laptops, smartphone, gaming console or a home computer that can give you information from the Web. Now imagine that number multiplied 100-fold – that is what Gartner is predicting in 2022.
Right now, the main devices that can connect to the internet (or to each other in your house) should be at least a smartphone or a laptop, but analysis company Gartner is predicting that an average household will have 500 connected things by 2022.
“We expect that a very wide range of domestic equipment will become ‘smart’ in the sense of gaining some level of sensing and intelligence combined with the ability to communicate, usually wirelessly,” said Nick Jones, vice president and analyst at Gartner, in a press statement.
“More sophisticated devices will include both sensing and remote control functions. Price will seldom be an inhibitor because the cost of the Internet of Things (IoT) enabling a consumer ‘thing’ will approach $1 in the long term.”
The prediction was made for only a decade away, not because technology is slowly adopted by consumers, but because many household appliances such as fridges and washing machines are replaced infrequently. But that isn’t to say that these products will only be developed by then, as some ‘smart’ fridges, washing machines and dishwashers have been available on the market for some time.
But as technology grows, these devices will become more dependant in broadband and internet connectivity.
“Devices in the smart home will demand connectivity; some will demand high reliability as they’ll be performing vital functions such as health monitoring, so homes will require reliable high-speed Internet connections,” Jones added.
“If these connections fail, many domestic devices might be forced to operate in, at best, a degraded manner. If homes become as dependent on good connectivity as businesses they will need fallback systems.”
While we suspect that the “average house” is probably not the average South African house, it’s interesting to speculate just how increased connectivity will affect the average home where ever you are. After all, we already know more people own cellphones than they do toilets, given widescale efforts to increase internet activity what will and won’t be connected in – say – a Tembisa shack in ten years? And what will that mean?
[Source – Gartner, Image – Shutterstock]
