Commentary about the silliness of the avalanche of IOT devices being created right now aside (99% of consumer internet startups are based on dumb ideas and fail, but that doesn&#x27;t mean there is no market or trend!), it&#x27;s inevitable that this stuff is going to get traction in the market and it&#x27;s a vast market. I doubt it&#x27;s going to happen based on a bunch of edge-case $99 devices though.<p>The big trend here is the cost of wifi enabled microprocessors dropping down to nearly nothing. Last year we were excited about raspberry pi dropping prices down to $30 for sensor-enabled hardware on the network.<p>This year you can buy a wifi-enabled microcontroller for _$3_ (search esp8266). And that&#x27;s not even in volume. At that price, pretty much anything consumer electronics companies build can be addressable on the network.<p>Add to that voice control, which is crude but usable and built into every phone already and improving quickly. The idea of walking into your house and looking for a light switch is going to feel like walking up to your TV to change the channel did 30 years ago when the remote went into wider use.<p>I find the economic arguments about not saving money using IOT devices a little amusing, on HN especially. My guess is that almost everyone reading this forum spends a shitload of money buying techno gadgets for reasons beyond &quot;it saves me money.&quot;