San Jose, Calif. – One in five people check their Facebook straight from their phone while still in bed in the morning, according to Michael Bjorn, head of research at Ericsson Consumer Lab.
Commenting on people’s modern day propensity to remain always connected and always ‘on’, Bjorn noted that this was what was especially giving tablets appeal. Indeed, recent studies by Ericsson show that people admit to being as likely to buy a tablet as they would be to buy a new PC, a huge step in the direction of connected mobility.
The need for always-on connectivity, however, puts a much larger importance on the notion of the cloud, with people wanting to access all of their data, wherever they are and on whatever device.
“Consumers want devices to be connected,” said Bjorn, explaining that this went well beyond phones and now included cameras to MP3 Players, game consoles to washing machines.
The “social web of things,” said Bjorn, would be the next step in our digital future in which Ericsson sees 50 billion devices as potentially connected, social objects which could “friend” each other in order to make one’s life more efficient.
For example, a connected electric car would be able to coordinate with a connected washing machine to know when would be an optimal time for either to use the household’s electricity. Likewise, a connected umbrella would be able to know the weather report and could suggest to its owner not to leave it behind in the morning.
“You can be friends with your stuff and your stuff can be friends with each other,” said Bjorn.
While some might find it odd, if not outright pointless to have a connected washing machine, Bjorn would disagree. “Imagine the kind of apps you could have on your washing machine. You could have competitions to see how cost effective your washing load was compared to that of your friends’,” he said, “or an app to help you keep track of your socks, so you would no longer have single strays,” he added, convincingly.
