Skip to content

The IoT gap between the industry and consumers

As digital industry professionals plough on with developing IoT gadgets, connectivity and batteries, the value of IoT as a concept keeps skyrocketing. Its walls are constantly stretched and edges reshaped to adjust to the latest innovations and breakthroughs.

Amongst all of this, the IoT circle has overseen one central area of day to day business conduct: non-corporate customers.

According to a report published by Harris Interactive in July 2016, only 48% of their focus group consumers were aware of IoT. Harris Interactive, a respected market research company based in New York, also found that only a third of the respondents would describe themselves as “very familiar” with smart technology as a whole. Such numbers demonstrate the huge gap between producers and consumers – the same consumers who should soon be buying and investing money into this brand new section of technology. For an industry that is predicted to grow at 20% per year, the professionals have quite forgotten about marketing focussed on private buyers.

The report is published just as IoT devices are starting to come onto the market for large everyday consumerism. Smart mats, fridges and bike locks are scheduled to become available for buying this year. Tado, in cooperation with AT&T and O2, has announced a new smart heating system and LG is working on presenting a robot hoover. It is interesting times for a period where the industry surges forward, yet the consumers remain insufficiently informed.

Based on the findings of Harris Interactive’s report, there is much for the companies to do. To successfully transform IoT’s popularity from corporate customers to private households, people should first be made aware of what is available. After all, they can’t buy what they don’t know exists.