Is This the Year of IoT?

2017 was a year of sci-fi films becoming a reality. From what the Back to the Future trilogy came up with in its films to those in movies like Minority Report, Star Wars and Star Trek, we’ve really come to a point where all these out-of-the-world devices are actually available in the market for commercial use. And how fast have the technological advancements happened? In less than 3 decades! We now have smart homes, smart watches, smart televisions, self-driving cars and more gadgets that are adding convenience to our everyday life.

However, of all the technologies that rolled out in the market, two of the most dominating ones were the Internet of Things and Virtual Reality. With back to back products in the market, the two technologies kept startling us with their potential. IoT and VR have evolved a lot over the last couple of years and today, the technologies are at their peak phases of evolution. But what about the future? What about IoT and VR ten months or a year down the line? Let’s analyze!

VR (Virtual Reality)

If 2016 was the year of Augmented Reality (AR) with the world going bonkers over Pokemon Go, 2017 is indeed the year of VR. With two solid VR devices, we saw how virtual reality can overwhelm our senses and give us an immersive experience. If you’re a gamer, imagine playing Arkham or Splinter Cell with the same immersive experience, being virtually part of the world.

As far as the future of VR is concerned, we can see that marketers and advertising agencies are working on unleashing its potential for marketing and promotional purposes. With tech giants experimenting on VR for social media platforms as well, it would be really beautiful to witness magic. We have already seen a glimpse of how virtual reality will be through the consumer devices that can connect to our smartphones, virtual reality rides at amusement parks (been on the Transformers the ride, Universal Studios?) and more. It will be interesting to see how marketers come up with creative ways of connecting their brands with us, making way for interactive commercial experience.

IoT (Internet of  Things)

If you’ve ever received a notification on your smartwatch about the time you should start for a movie that you’ve booked online, you’ll know how connected your devices are. Your smartphone, smartwatch, television, and other wearable tech devices are the most practical applications of IoT, including home automation systems. The technology is the next big thing today and every tech giant out there is reinvesting on IoT for better precisions and operations. There are two parallel ways IoT is slowly influencing our lives today – one is the industrial evolution of IoT that is making the best use of this technology for supply-chain management, artificial intelligence, machine learning and more and the other domestic application of IoT for added consumer convenience.

Today, a lot of indigenous IoT enthusiasts have also come up with tons of IoT-based devices that aim at bettering our life on an aspect or another. We have the Ramu Droid that is an IoT-based cleaning assist, that rolled out to better our streets and roads. We also have smart utility systems being built to complement the Smart Cities vision and more. Considering the rate at which IoT is progressing, we can say that the coming months will show us more of the technology’s potential.

In conclusion, all we can say that both have been on par with each other, consistently outsmarting the other at various time frames. Keeping the competition aside, we can be glad that no matter to which technology this year boils down to, the ultimate beneficiaries are us. What do you think?

Also, Read

Making Devices Smart – The Simply Smart Story