The Internet of Things Is in a Bubble Phase, Says IBM Internet of Things Exec
Not everything should be network ready … yet. However as you replace items consider if there’s value in networking that thing. If you can’t see it, then don’t do it. Not all of that sensor data is worth collecting or selling either, and there isn’t a “Home-OS” yet, so those things aren’t so smart.
The rest of this story comes later - at some future point that toaster will have a camera, heat sensor, wifi chip, and automated toast routine. The toaster will have that not because there’s great value, but because adding those chips and features are so cheap that few toasters will come without those features. It will sense when the toast in each slot is perfectly browned, and increase the heat in the areas needed to make both sides consistently browned. It will text your TV if it’s on, or your other device depending on where in the house you are. Again, toasters will only do this at the point where it becomes trivial to enable those features, and not before.
“[It’s] a classic bubble phase,” said Brody, referring to a glut of half-baked business plans that are based on connecting an everyday device to the internet, and then selling the harvested data.
He added that it’s a waste of time for companies to start storing every piece of data they can get their hands on, and that some firms say they want to do this just because they hear that’s what everyone else is doing.
“Most of what we’re storing is useless, and the amount of money people will spend on it is zero,” Brody told Gigaom Research director Caroline McCrory.