Internet Of Things: Beyond the Smartphone Screen

By Steve Griffiths, Global CDO & Head of Strategic Services & Partnerships, DDB Europe A recent report from Deloitte shows the extent to which people in the UK have become ‘addicted’ to their smartphones. 10% admitted to using their handsets “always” or “very often” while eating at home or in restaurants, a third of UK adults has argued with their partner about using their mobile phone too much, 50% of 18 to 24 year olds said they checked their phones in the middle of the night (mainly for instant messaging and social media) and one in ten adults admitted to reaching for their phone as soon as they woke up. These are staggering but probably conservative numbers, as people rarely own up to the extent of their usage – even to themselves. I recently went on a smartphone detox because of an all-consuming habit and gave my phone away to my daughter. Don’t get me wrong – I think smartphones are amazing and services like UBER are evidence of how these things have transformed our daily routines. So, my issue is not with these life-enhancing services but rather that there are so few examples of services, which are genuinely better and easier to use than the current alternative. As a consequence, we all spend too much of our time, head down, staring at our screens instead of taking in the world that is in front of us. In other words, our smartphone screens have become too much of the window through which our lives happen, and that doesn’t feel like a good thing. So, what about The Internet Of Things? Well actually I have a huge amount of hope that IoT will change that because it will unburden us all from our smartphones. Back in 1998 Nicholas Negroponte said: “Like air and drinking water, being digital will be noticed only by its absence, not its presence.” His quote perfectly captures why I am so excited by IoT. It suggests that life will happen, and that technology will exist to make life better, which is in sharp contrast to some of the talk about BIG DATA and AI, where you might be forgiven for thinking that technology will happen and that life will exist only to make technology better. In Negroponte’s world our smartphones will become less obvious as the connections between objects, places and people become smarter and UBER is the perfect illustration of this in action. Screen interaction kept to a minimum and complex demand and supply processes dramatically simplified and automated leaving us to get from A to B with minimum effort. IoT is an opportunity for brands and retailers to move beyond the limitations of the smartphone screen, and also to overcome a significant issue they have all faced: how to covert the enormous amount of screen time we all generate, into opportunities to engage with us as consumers. With the emergence of IoT where everything and everyone is connected, not only do the opportunities to engage […]

Internet Of Things: Beyond the Smartphone Screen is courtesy of Cellulite Solutions

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