Each home to have 500 gadgets

Chennai: Given the growing tech gadgets strewn around homes, a typical family may end up owning over 500 smart devices in less than a decade from now. With the ‘Internet of Things’ gaining control,  there is likely to be a huge jump in the number of smart gadgets at afforelectronic gadgets for mendable costs that could propel an affluent family to own high number of tech devices, opening new avenues of digital business. Nick Jones, VP, Gartner said, “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.”

Smart home will offer many innovative digital business opportunities to those organizations who can adapt their products and services to exploit it, said a Gartner special report on the trends in digital technologies. Falling cost of adding sensing and communications to consumer products will mean that a typical family home, in a mature affluent market, could contain several hundred smart objects by 2022, it said. “More sophisticated devices will include both sensing and remote control functions and price will seldom be an inhibitor as a consumer ‘thing’ will approach $1 in the long term,” Mr Jones said.

Smart domestic product categories are manifold and range from med-ia 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. Wireless technology will be a key foundation of the smart home and most of the device categories will be connected wirelessly. Gartner expe-cts Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cellular and various proprietary and mesh networking wireless technologies to find a place in smart home. However, business models that analyze information must pay great attention to issues such as consumer opt-in, education.