With Microsoft agreeing to sell connected home devices from Insteon, and Google’s buyout of Nest for $3.2bn earlier this year, the market for smart devices is booming.
Data collector IHS recently predicted that cloud-based home management systems is projected to grow to 44.6 million by 2018, up from 5.6 million at the end of 2013, while figures from Juniper Research revealed that global smart home services are expected to generate total revenues of about $71bn by 2018.
That makes it an attractive emerging market for existing tech giants and start ups.
The hype coincides with a survey of 1,600 Internet of Things (IoT) experts in the technology industry, law, academia, of which 83% agreed that connected devices will "have widespread and beneficial effects" by 2025.
I agree. Earlier, both Samsung and LG released smart home systems that allow home owners to control their appliances. For example a user can text their washing machine to ask "What are you doing?" and get updates from their fridge to remind them to buy food for the evening.
However, with all the benefits though, there will be privacy violation, as Justin Reich, a fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Centre for Internet and Society, wrote this week
"There will be new ways for people to connect, as well as new pathways towards isolation, misanthropy, and depression," he said.
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