Connected TV points the way forward for the Internet of things

[Commentary] Everyone from industrial giants to bootstrapped companies on Kickstarter are talking about the promise of the Internet of things to improve our lives. But how will the connected home make the jump from a favorite toy of the tech elite or a status symbol of the wealthy to be a ubiquitous technology that reaches the broad mass market of consumers?

As usual, history offers some valuable lessons. In fact, we only have to go back a few years and look at how the connected TV market took shape to get a sneak peek of what will soon unfold for the connected home. Today, the majority of these devices on the market have some form of connected TV capability, driven by well-known services like Netflix, Pandora and YouTube. In order for the Internet of things – or even the connected home itself – to reach the mainstream like connected TV before it, today’s participants must learn from the past. While Boxee’s product was rightly a favorite of the tech elite, it was inaccessible to the mainstream consumer due to a lack of retail distribution and more importantly, a content strategy that bucked the way the media industry worked. As a result, retailers and content providers that could have been active promoters had their underlying business models threatened, and as a result, pushed other solutions.