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The IoT Trap

Parking Meters Too Smart for their Own Good Read article now » The IoT Trap By Elliot Williams I'm sure that you've heard about the Sonos speaker debacle. (If not, read about it on Hackaday.) Basically, a company that sells a premium Internet-connected speaker wanted to retire an older product line, and offered a 30% discount to people who would "trade in" their old speakers for new ones. The catch: they weren't really trading them in, but instead flashing a "self-destruct" firmware and then taking it to the recycling. Naturally, Sonos' most loyal customers weren't happy about intentionally bricking their faithful devices, a hubbub ensued, and eventually the CEO ended up reversing course and eating crow. Hackaday's own Gerrit Coetzee wrote up our coverage and mentioned that maybe Sonos just couldn't afford to support the service for the old products any more, and didn't want them to remain in the wild. So much so, that it's worth 30% of the cost of their current product to get out from under the implicit contract. By buying one of these IoT devices, you're paying more money up front for the promise that the company will keep supporting the service that it relies on into the future. But providing this service costs money, and as more and more "products" are actually services in disguise, we've seen case after case of working machines shut down because the company doesn't want to keep paying for the service. It doesn't seem to matter if the company is small, like Sonos, or an immensely wealthy monopoly player like Google. Somehow, the people planning these products have a much shorter lifetime in mind than their customers do, and fail to make the up-front price cover costs. This puts these companies in a tough spot. The more a customer loves the device, the longer they'll want to keep it running, and the worse the blowback will be when the firm eventually has to try to weasel its way out of a "lifetime" contract. And they are alienating exactly their most loyal customers -- those who want to keep their widget running longer than might even be reasonable. Given that this whole business model is new, it's not surprising that some firms will get it wrong. What's surprising to me is how many fall into the IoT trap. So take this as a cautionary tale as a consumer. And if you're in a company offering a product that depends on a service to continue to function, ask yourself if you're really going to be able to support it for the customer's idea of the lifetime of the product. What looks like a great deal at a five-year horizon might bankrupt your company at ten. Will you, or your customers, be willing to throw their devices away? Should they be? From The Blog Ethics Whiplash as Sonos Tries Every Possible Wrong Way to Handle IoT Right By Gerrit Coetzee We're trying to figure out whether Sonos was doing the right thing, and it's getting to the point where we need pins, a corkboard, and string.  Read more » Recording Video In The Era Of CRTs: The Video Camera Tube By Maya Posch We have all watched videos of concerts and events dating back to the 1950s, but probably never really wondered how this was done. Read more » Just How Can You Lose Something The Size Of A Cargo Ship? By Jenny List A ship hit the coast of Ireland. It had been lost at sea for weeks. How is this even possible in 2020? Read more » Hackaday Podcast EP056 By Hackaday Editors Hackaday Editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams talk about all the articles on Hackaday that you will love.  Read more » If You Missed It Raspberry Pi 4 Offers Up 2 GB for the Price of One RC Ground Effect Vehicle Skims Over the Water Printing Liquid Concrete Ghost Frame Shows People (and Cats) That Don’t Exist Sonic The Self-Balancing Robot: Face-Plants And The Challenges Of Sensor Integration Tangential Oscillating Cutting Knife Makes Parts from the Ups and Downs NEVER MISS A HACK Terms of Use Privacy Policy Hackaday.io Hackaday.com

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