Are you ready for “the next big thing”?
BLOGGER: JEFF BARAK
Afraid of somehow losing your beloved pet dog? Not to worry – that’ll soon become a thing of the past. The tracking devices that fleet managers use for their trucks and cars are on their way to becoming embedded in household pets (or to be more precise, in their collars) as new connected devices bring on a huge wave of change in the wireless industry.
Speaking at TM Forum’s Management World Americas, AT&T’s David Haight firmly believes emerging devices are going to be “the next big thing.” With mobile penetration already at between 98 and 100 percent in the United States, future growth is going to come from subscribers owning multiple devices (tablets, e-readers) and machine-to-machine (M2M) technology.
Haight, who is AT&T’s vice president of Business Development, Emerging Devices Organization, noted that mobile data volumes on AT&T’s network had increased by 8,000 percent over the past four years and that by 2015, mobile data volumes were expected to be eight to 10 times greater. “This is scary for an operator like AT&T, but it’s also exciting. It forces us to be innovative.”
Haight sees three major growth areas for embedded M2M devices (aside from household pets): ehealth, the automobile industry and the connected home, the latter concentrating mainly on issues of home security and domestic energy consumption. As for cars, AT&T has already signed a number of agreements with manufacturers and Haight says there will be a number of vehicles hitting the roads in 2012 with enhanced connectivity, mainly in the spheres of diagnostics and safety features. Ehealth, due to the caution that surrounds use of M2M technology for reliable monitoring and treatment in potentially life-threatening situations, is taking off slightly more slowly, but Haight predicts there will be a number of new digital health products coming to market next year.
And what about your dog? The challenge here is that as tracking devices get smaller, it becomes more difficult to introduce connectivity, which is why giant companies like AT&T are teaming up with smaller firms and developers to provide the products to match today’s exploding demand for connectivity, as no one company has all the answers. As Haight says, it all comes down to creating new business models to make wireless a reality for just about any device that benefits from connectivity.
As a gadget freak I need a dog to justify this new collar to my wife ;-)
As far as I know, I think dogs already carry a small chip that identifies them 1-1, as an ID. BTW – they carry it in their body, underneath their fur, and not in a collar. So Shai, may be you don’t really need a dog. :-).
Hi Ophir, the chip they have today is not actually a mobile chip – it is a chip that can be read if the dog is found by someone.
AT&T are talking about mobile tracking, GPS, 3G etc.