Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Though the Internet of Things era has only just started, it may already be broken.

Like generals fighting the last war instead of the next one, many companies working to build the Internet of Things seem to be stuck in the smartphone and tablet era, embracing approaches that will soon be obsolete, if they aren’t already.

Today, smartphones are powerful hubs surrounded by less intelligent objects. Each device is managed and operated from a few centralized data centers. This is not yet a major issue as devices currently last only a year or two before being decommissioned. The cost of managing data centers is limited in duration and underwritten by a constant flood of replacement devices with short lives.

Not so in the Internet of Things era: an LED lightbulb has an expected life of 20+ years; aircraft are expected to remain in service for decades; the average car on the road in the US is now more than a decade old.

Applying a centralized cloud-based business model to these devices will mean decades of expense without decades of associated revenue. At IBM we already see clients that are struggling with device-related services that have failed to meet revenue targets, but cannot be switched off for fear of angering an installed base....

...Given how quickly the wearables market is developing, Snodgrass believes marketers need to carve out a small amount of budget now to do what he calls micro-tests. “Focus half of your mobile team on trying to understand and explore how this new market works. At the least, the market share for mobile will flow naturally into the market share for wearables.

”Schonfeld concurs, saying marketing teams will benefit from some wearables-spurred experimentation — even if it doesn’t yet lead to integrating wearables in the marketing strategy. “For quantified-self wearables, it’s all about the data. How can brands tap into that data or enhance it to actually deliver value to consumers? Glass is more experimental, but thinking about ways to market on a heads-up screen could lead to broader insights about mobile marketing in general.”...

This is why Google's launch yesterday of Android Wear, its wearable platform,  is likely to see so much interest. Developers still need to build the "killer app" designed uniquely for wearables that will make the devices compelling for still-skeptical mainstream consumers. Now, with Android Wear, they have a major platform to build for

.

In a new report from BI Intelligence, we make sense of the current wearable apps landscape, look at why app ecosystems are currently so minimally stocked, explore the types of wearables that are likeliest to take off, and try to pinpoint a few "killer apps" that could make the devices truly compelling. We also look at the strong potential for Google or Apple to instantly take over the app market....