Earlier this year, at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit, I was struck by a remark that I thought I heard from Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg. “By 2020,” he said, “50 billion devices will be wirelessly connected to the internet.”
I was going to tweet his statement from @breakingmedia but hesitated because I thought I must have misheard. After all, that’d be more than 10 times the current number of mobile phones in the world—an already incredible 4 and a half billion—and about four web-connected devices for every person on the planet. While those of us who live in the narcissistic media navel of New York are often tempted to imagine that everyone totes an iPhone, iPad and laptop—as well as whatever desktop is getting dusty in their study at home—it seemed a stretch to imagine the average resident of, say, India or China using four or more devices. I concluded that either I wasn’t paying proper attention or Vestberg was indulging in a little bit of corporate boosterism—Ericsson is in the business of enabling mobile connections, so 50 billion of them would be good business for the Swedish equipment manufacturer.
Then, at about the time the iPad was released, I had the chance to talk with David Haight, AT&T’s VP of Business Development, Emerging Devices Organization. Ten minutes of conversation with Haight is enough to change your vision of the future from one where everyone is carrying a wireless internet device like a mobile phone, to one where that device in your hand connects you with an internet of things all around you. Everywhere.
Haight sees the world not in two or three groups of wireless devices, but about ten. The obvious ones are the smartphones, e-readers, laptops, multimedia tablets like the iPad, and the GPS navigation devices such as a Garmin or TomTom. Then, slightly less obviously but nevertheless already familiar to us, are the gaming devices and other consumer electronics that can benefit from a network connection such as cameras and picture frames.
Beyond that, and set to start hitting the market in a big way later this year, are the home-management devices such as the Openpeak OpenTablet, which will allow families to synch and centralize their social networks, emails, calendars, music, videos, photos and so on. These will also increasingly be used to manage the home itself, and will allow remote control over heating and cooling, home security systems and so on.
Then there are cars. Most auto manufacturers are already investing in and investigating the idea of the networked vehicle, and Haight believes that your car will eventually be able to diagnose trouble or even potential trouble and report it, not only to you and your loved ones, but also to manufacturers, dealers and auto repair centers.
Haight also has a category he thinks of as people- and pet-tracking devices, which, again, are already reaching the market but look set to become increasingly sophisticated and popular in the near future. Also in this category are the health monitoring devices, which—unlike some of convenience-oriented devices above—would seem to have real life-changing potential.
“Imagine scales, or an exercise device, or heart monitor, or blood monitoring device that could keep doctors, healthcare providers, insurance companies and loved ones apprised of a patient’s condition,” says Haight. Imagine it indeed: Lives will be saved, but privacy advocates’ blood-pressure will surely skyrocket. (You thought you didn’t want people knowing what you just bought online; imagine if everyone was watching your nightly weigh-in).
While we’re on the medical kick, and if you want to get a sense of the potential of the internet of things, there are few examples I like more than the Vitality GlowCaps—launched on the AT&T network, to surprisingly little fanfare, on March 23 this year. These are intelligent caps for prescription bottles, designed to remedy the serious problem of people forgetting to take their pills. The caps use light and sound to remind people to take a pill, which can then be followed by a text or phone call if the bottle isn’t opened. Every time the bottle is opened, the adherence data is relayed to Vitality, which compiles progress reports that can be sent to caregivers, doctors and family members. Data generated by the GlowCaps can also be used to refill prescriptions automatically as pills deplete.
I know, I know; it’s a plastic cap that lights up and beeps and stuff, not a sexy iPad. But could it be that in our excitement over one particular company and its devices, we the media—and many of the brands that we work with—are kind of missing the point? Sure, your brand probably ought to be wondering whether it can create any useful apps for the major mobile platforms. That’s a given. But the bigger question might be how your product itself is going to interact with 50 billion different devices once we truly live among an internet of things.