- You have left your house for a long drive and have been on the road for few hours. Then suddenly the thought strikes you whether you had switched off all the electrical devices before leaving.
- You are out on vacation but was expecting an important package to arrive by mail. You wish if you could have spoken to the delivery guy and let him know where to put it lest it gets spoiled.
- It's a hot and humid summer evening when you are on your way to home. If someone could have switch on the AC few minutes before you reach home, it would have been really nice.
These are all quite familiar cravings we have and would be part of many of our wish lists. The answer to these above requirements could be a smart light, a smart camera or in entirety a smart home.'
India today has the second highest smartphone using population in the world even ahead of the USA. However considering a
penetration of less than 30%, it means there is still ample scope to increase the smartphone usage in the country.
Today smartphones are an integral part of our life. We remain connected with family and friends, pay our bills, keep track of finances, update social media and even do work through smart phones. The smartphone that we have in our hands today comes with immense computing power. It is said that the computing power we have in a high-end smartphone today would have been enough to blast off a rocket into outer space in the 1950s.
However the gap that not been bridged yet is that between the phone in our pocket and the other devices we use in daily life; our car, our watch or the electrical and electronic appliances in our house. It is to bridge this gap that smart devices have come into picture.
Smart wearables were the first smart devices that became of popular use. Today we can see enough people wearing a Fitbit or Apple Watch or Samsung Gear or any other smart watch to consider. With these wearables we can not only do things which we would have otherwise done using a smartphone like receive calls, text messages, check emails, listen to songs but these devices also act as a personal health monitor by keeping a tap on some vital body parameters like heart rate, pulse and also track calorie erosion when we engage in physical exercise.
The wearables help us to set personal health goals and help keep a track how far we progress on that; it helps us to live a bit more healthier life. Google Glass has opened a new frontier in the wearable technology field with widespread application starting from medicine to journalism. In India Google Glass should find application in the education field as well; when many of the children are deprived of quality education, enabling live streaming using Google Glass has help students in far flung areas to have more accessibility to quality material
The
Global Wearable Devices Market is expected to exceed more than US$ 51.50 Billion by 2022. Wearable devices are here to stay and penetrate our daily lives.
In India the wearable device market is set to reach to a stage very close to $2 billion by 2023 while the penetration is not expected to change much from current levels.
Hopefully that will change soon as more Indians become health conscious and application of wearable is expanded beyond just the millennials. Wearable technology should be able to find wide scale used case among the elderly population where the devices can be used to trigger emergency response.
And when we talk of daily life, nothing is complete without an interaction with our home and it's appliances be it the oven, the air conditioner, lights or the security system. We now have smart thermostats which can be controlled remotely through apps in smartphones; thus we can now switch on the AC or heating before reaching home to have a more comfortable experience. Smart thermostats can also alert the owner in case of any abnormal changes like fire. We now have smart lighting solutions which can be controlled through apps.
Thus while on vacation you can still switch on and off the porch lights remotely or may be control the Diwali decoration lights. Smart cameras can help you keep an eye on your house remotely. There are also voice integrated smart security camera which can help the owner interact with any unknown person knocking at the front door or may be instruct the delivery guys to keep the parcels in the right place. And to integrate all these smart devices we can have a Google Home or Alexa; from playing the favorite song to opening the garage door these smart device integrators can do any task you just ask them to do. And that means no need to even use a smartphone app; you just say and Alexa does it.
Apart from convenience, smart devices add to the better management of energy by controlling the devices effectively as per need. Artificial Intelligence integrated with smart devices increases their utility many times more. Thus while we may witness a marginal increase in the initial installation cost, the effective savings on running cost over a longer time would weigh out the initial investment many times over.
In the US alone, smart home is expected to be a $40 billion plus business with a penetration into more than 50% households by 2023. Compared to that in
India the penetration is expected to be less than 10% by 2023 generating a business of $7 billion. Thus India provides a far larger market in terms of opportunity.
One of my first interactions recently has been with smartness built in today's car. I had recently the experience of using a Bluelink enabled Hyundai Sonata. With this new technology you can now start you car remotely with the a smart phone app, lock or unlock the car, control the cooling and also technology will help send alerts and updates from the car. This is something very basic considering the world has moved into the realm of self-driving cars. However such smart connectivity is yet to come in cars which fall outside the premium segment in Indian. Hopefully in very near future that will no longer be the case. Connected car market and ecosystem is evolving across the globe.
By 2023, connected car and related accessories will be a billion dollar market in India alone.
Smart devices are expected to have widespread use in the public space as well. Smart lights can help municipal bodies to more effectively control the city lighting and manage any wastage. Today's cities consumer more than 70% of the world energy production, thus effective management of resources can definitely help in the long run to create a sustainable ecosystem.
Chicago has undertaken an ambitious and largest (in USA) project to replace 270,000 city lights with smart lights resulting in an estimated savings of $10 million is energy costs annually.
Smart cameras can be used to monitor security and more effectively manage traffic in busy urban freeways. And the data from all these connected devices provides the as big an opportunity for analytics and machine learning to work more effectively.
In Nairobi, Kenya Huawei has installation communication system that integrates 1800 smart cameras with 195 police bureaus and 7600 police officers providing a sense of national and economic security.
India has also embarked on an ambitious journey of building 100 smart cities with an estimated funding of $14 billion. In India such smart solutions can also help to address to the problems related to women's safety.
That day is not far when on a long road trip while driving you can feed an instruction to the Alexa or Google integrated car to switch off the lights in you drawing room and the task will be done. And when you reach back home exhausted your car will communicate with the garage security system to open the gates and also ensure the hot water is ready for you to take a refreshing bath.
And the local police station become aware of a theft or burglary even before the owners actually dial the emergency response number.
The applications and opportunities are just endless. So get your first smart device from
Flipkart which provides an amazing collection of
Smart Wearable,
Smart Home,
Smart Camera and
Smart Light solutions to choose from.
#GetFitWithFlipkart #SmartHomeRevolution
References:
- https://www.statista.com/outlook/279/119/smart-home/india
- https://www.statista.com/outlook/279/109/smart-home/united-states
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/pikeresearch/2018/04/06/smart-cities/#5b8a459113c8
- http://www.bbc.com/future/bespoke/specials/connected-world/government.html
The images are sourced from Google Image search and the writer of the blog doesn't claim ownership of the same.
