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A significant area of the Internet of Things where we will definitely see expansion next year is smart cities, with more and more countries across the world preparing for a tech-driven future. From Pittsburgh to Singapore, Helsinki to Hong Kong, cities are making smart additions to civilian life, looking to improve on our journeys to work, our life in the home and deepen our relationship with our urban environment.
Munich/Stuttgart – IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Bosch today announced a collaboration for industrial Internet of Things (IoT), making available Bosch IoT Suite services on open standards-based IBM Bluemix and IBM Watson IoT Platform for clients to efficiently update millions of IoT devices.
Even with the inclusion of autonomous vehicles and Tesla, smart homes are still the area that has cemented the concept and the potential of the IoT most fully for the general public. There’s much more to talk about than fridges that tell you when your milk’s going to go off and light bulbs that change colour, too. (Although both of those things are still pretty cool).
It’s understandable that parts of IoT will move forward at different rates. But if we assume the advances in IoT will play out as we expect across our five areas of interest (wearables, home, cities, enterprise, environment), then we could be looking at a future where we live longer, we’re fitter and healthier, there’s less pollution, we need to work less, and we’re rarely late. Or are we? To paint a picture of the future as a Logan’s Run-esque utopia (spoiler: the film doesn’t turn out well) would be disingenuous, but to envisage 50 years from now as like the Pixar film WALL-E where humans are inert and ignorant would be taking things to the other extreme too. It’s clear at least that there will be knock-on effects of an automated society that no-one can predict but let’s try some of the easier ones .
One of the only areas of the wearable technology market that has matured to the point where its advocate base is wider than just early adopters, is fitness trackers. Sure, recently we’ve seen Nike release real-life versions of the clothing tech from Back to the Future 2 but coupled with a prohibitively high price tag for most, these are unlikely to go much beyond shares and likes across social media for the few days after the story breaks. But as more tech companies realise the potential of wearable devices and more fashion brands warm to the idea of smart clothing, we’ll see two huge industries that will try – and often combine – to make wearables more than just a sought-after christmas gift for 2016/2017.
_Super categories / (video) / Electric vehicle / Future transportation / Life / Mobility / Work
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