Media Relations for a Connected World
The thing about the Internet of Things, says Cees Links, is that “it’s very thingy.”
10.11.2016 14:10
It’s not that Links, a pioneer of the wireless data industry, doesn’t see the connection between the Internet of Things and the things themselves, but all the focus on the actual devices, he says, is missing the point and making everyone confused about what the business opportunity and actual potential for the industry is.
The focus on things, posits Links, takes away from the real value IoT provides, which he believes lies in the realm of services.
Take the FitBit, for example. Marketed as a fitness band, it’s true value could be as part of a broader lifestyle service, one that should make the wearer holistically healthier in the long run.
Companies like FitBit, and others in the IoT space, don’t seem to have grasped the difference between what they potentially have and what they are selling, said Links, noting that data is still not being used in an optimized way, nor is it being made particularly actionable. This, Links says, is also where the term “smart” fails, because as advanced as some of these gadgets are, they still aren’t particularly clever in terms of piecing together relevant bits of data and carrying out the next logical step.
Read the entire article here http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1386&doc_id=282039&page_number=1
