Inflated expectations around the Internet of Things has led research agency Gartner to dub the sector as achieving “peak hype” among various types of technology.
The agency’s 2014 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies maps the progression of technological trends within digital industries. It found excitement around IoT has peaked amid a flurry of different projects and expectations.
Initiatives such as Google’s Nest smart thermostat are laying the foundations for the future connected home: the search giant teamed up with Samsung and ARM earlier this year to form smart home project Thread, which hopes to find more efficient ways of connecting products in the home.
Wearable technology is another technology that has peaked, according to the report. Big things are expected from Android Wear after Google’s unveiling at June’s I/O conference, with its unified interface widely expected to become de facto across Android wearables. Just as significant are the ever-present rumours of Apple’s long awaited iWatch, which is tipped to mark a major step in personal health monitoring.
By contrast, it found NFC to have bottomed out in what Gartner described as the “trough of disillusionment”. Regardless of the increase in contactless payment systems for mobile technology, the absence of practical implementations for NFC, as well as a general lack of enthusiasm from service providers, means it is less well regarded as a worthwhile avenue to pursue for operators and vendors.
Other technologies that had disappointed in the report were mobile health, augmented reality and gamification.
Gartner’s 2014 Hype Cycle assesses the direction of more than 2,000 technologies grouped across 119 areas.
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