IoT Impasse have to be surpassed by the addressing the challenges that comes along the transformation.
My last article created so much of a hullabaloo across the board and I was really overwhelmed by the response. Companies which felt the pinch of my pitch wrote directly to me saying how much they regret burning their fingers. If only they could have put in a lot more effort in knowing what the customer wanted, they could have saved a lot of money, and possibly made a lot more.
I have never professed to be a technical or technology expert but instead, a good marketer and marketing expert in a specialised field of IOT, Smart Cities, etc. Marketing has more to do with consumers and end users rather than technology experts. It’s like the cell phone which is more common man oriented, rather than catering specifically to the computer or IT gurus.
I speak for the common man, who needs technology that they can understand, like plug and play technology or screwdriver technology. He needs to keep himself updated constantly about all the things he cares for in this world. Be it the health of his loved ones or the safety of his house. He wants to reach in time to work through the proper guidance of traffic, wants his kids to get to school safely, shop for freshest and fastest foodstuff, get his train or flight timings instantly, save on household utility bills and a whole load of conveniences. Anyone who can offer him these conveniences, he would be willing to be a party to their progress. But all of the above need to, of course, be at a nominal price.
Companies which try to peddle their IoT wares charge the earth for their products. They take their developmental costs and incidentals to burden the consumer. Then these same companies believe they can milk this person for future services like cloud storage, data analytics, etc.
Imagine yourself in that position, would you like to become that sacrificial goat? No way! You would rather look at your convenience which you are comfortable with. You would rather install an individual doorbell or a view hole camera and work at it independently, rather than integrate it into a hub and a network.
These basics are still not understood by large companies. They should make a product which is fit for masses, rather than classes who can easily afford a private security agency.
I know I may sound overly pessimistic, but it’s high time investors and stakeholders realise how important it is to address this issue immediately, otherwise they would be running red ink all over their balance sheets. Some of them take our help in addressing these critical issues and suffer much less.
Let me hope that wisdom dawns on these enterprises soon enough and they take corrective actions to stave off their doom.
