We, the humans, have the quality of getting hooked on to new things like the new iPhone, a new Lady Gaga Single, pretty easily nowadays but when it comes to Internet of Things, many of us still have our doubts intact about the technology.
According to a recently released survey conducted by YouGov of 1,181 United States adults, this scene is slowly changing. According to the survey, consumers might not be that optimistic about the technology right now but they see huge future prospects. According to it, thirty-one percent of the people surveyed are affirmative that a "fully connected smart home" will be a reality by the end of next year, while sixty percent believe it is achievable within the next five years.
So, the scene might be changing for IoT but this change seems to be happening at a very slow pace. In order to give this slow vehicle some push, we at IndianWeb2 have come up with a few tips that can help all you IoT companies out there better the consumers fondness and acceptability of the product.
Money Matters -
Whenever we go to buy something in the market, most of us have the price tag part of the product at our priority. And, when it comes to IoT, this becomes even more important. Consumers nowadays are already hooked on to super-expensive tablets, smartphones and wearables, and they find it difficult to spend thousands of rupees more on home appliances just because they can be connected to the Internet. In order to make the IoT devices more acceptable to the consumers, the companies might have to consider making the price point a little warmer to the middle class consumers.
Security comes first -
According to the survey, twenty-five percent of the 1,181 respondents had the cybersecurity of the smart home as their primary concern. The concern is almost similar to the that emerged during the early days of online banking. People were perplexed whether it's safe or not but the banks made sure they address this concern and nowadays online banking is used by almost everyone. The seed that gave birth to this security concern was the incident that occurred last year. Last summer, a website provided links to the live footage of more than 73,000 Internet connected security cameras. If the IoT companies want the consumers to adapt to this technology sooner, they will have to address the security concerns attached to it first.
Longevity matters more than simplicity -
According to the survey, 82 percent of the adults weren't worried about the complexity of these devices. What part concerned them was their life, their longevity. They don't want to spend thousands and thousands of money on something that will go obsolete in sometime. They don't want the IoT market to follow the footsteps of the Smartphone market where the new launches go obsolete every time there's a software upgrade.
Energy Efficient -
About 27 percent of the respondents had improving energy efficiency as their most sought after objective of adopting the smart home technology. This was followed by home security at a close second and home entertainment and media at the third position.
A study report, based on over 2,000 consumer surveys in the U.S. predicts that the Internet of Things is inevitable, with nearly two-thirds of consumers planning to buy an in-home IoT device in the next five years. However, as one might expect, the consumers polled displayed a lack of awareness of the term “Internet of Things.” A massive 87% hadn’t heard of the term 'IoT' or 'Internet of Things'.
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