IoT & Connected Devices — 2019 Predictions and Outcomes
Year four. The streak is running about 80% accuracy and the category is now the platform companies plus a few good niches. Predictions are about who ships, when, and what the platform giants buy or kill.
How 2018 actually played out
Google Home Hub shipped October 2018. Predicted to the quarter. Strong sales through holiday. Hit.
HomePod underperformed commercially. Roughly 3.5M units sold in calendar 2018, well under Apple's internal target. Apple won't admit it in earnings; the channel inventory and Q4 price cut tell the story. Hit on the prediction (we said it would miss).
Mesh wifi went table-stakes. Every major retailer had 4+ mesh-wifi SKUs by Black Friday 2018. Single-router category collapsed to budget shelf. Hit.
Ring + Nest Hello won doorbells. Combined market share estimated at 70%+ by year-end. Skybell and Vivint hung on, the long tail thinned. Hit.
Apple Watch ECG shipped Series 4, September 2018. FDA cleared. Real medical-device claim. Three years late vs the 2015 hype, on time vs my own 2016 prediction (the "18+ months" delay). Hit.
AirPods 2 didn't ship in 2018. The year closed with the original still selling out and no refresh — a 2019 model is rumored but unannounced. Held my call. Hit.
Sonos IPO'd August 2018. Priced lower than the rumored range but cleared the bell. Hit on shape, slight miss on timing — I said Q3 filing, they did Q3 trading.
An IoT-security scandal made the front page. Multiple, actually — the Strava heatmap exposing military base layouts, the VTech fallout still echoing, the MyHeritage breach. The default-credentials camera and baby-monitor stories kept simmering as Mirai-style botnets recruited unpatched devices all year. Half-hit — it happened, but more of a slow burn than the singular Q1 headline I called.
Net 2018 scorecard: roughly 88% prediction accuracy. The platform-and-medical-device thesis is holding. Less drama, more compounding.
What I got wrong
I missed Wyze. The $20 Wyze Cam (released late 2017) ate the bottom end of the connected-camera market through 2018 in a way I didn't see coming. Three brands ≠ three winners; there's a fourth tier of cheap-and-good that the premium brands ignore at their peril.
I also missed how big the "true wireless" earbud market would become beyond Apple. Galaxy Buds were rumored, Sony WF-1000X was already real (released late 2017), Jabra Elite Active 65t shipped April 2018. The category was already three-deep before AirPods 2 even refreshed.
2019 predictions
1. AirPods Pro ships with noise cancellation. Q4. $249. Active noise cancellation becomes the table-stakes feature for premium true wireless. Sony WF-1000XM3 will land H1 and pressure Apple's timeline.
2. Apple Watch Series 5 ships with always-on display. September. Series 4 made it a real medical device; Series 5 makes it actually wearable as a wristwatch (no more wrist-flip-to-check).
3. Smart-ring category gets serious. Oura Ring Gen 2 (already shipping) hits 100K units by year-end. Motiv folds or pivots. The form factor is finally getting good enough for non-enthusiasts.
4. Matter (still called CHIP / Project Connected Home over IP) gets announced. Apple, Google, Amazon, and Zigbee Alliance start the interop story. Will be announced by year-end; will not ship for at least 18 months. Standards stories always slip.
5. Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) routers hit retail by Q3. Adoption stays slow because client devices won't catch up until 2020-21. The router refresh cycle starts.
6. Apple Watch Series 5 gets first cellular-only mode. Tied to AirPods Pro launch and the iPhone 11 family. Selling "leave the phone at home" as the new Apple Watch story.
7. Fitbit either gets acquired or pivots away from hardware. Tracker market is saturated, Versa hasn't caught Apple Watch, the smartwatch pivot stalled. Best buyer: Google. (Bet: announcement before year-end.)
8. Smart-display sales overtake smart-speaker sales for the first quarter. Q4. Echo Show 5, Echo Show 8, Google Nest Hub Max — the visual-first home interface is the new default.
Gratitude beat
Big thanks to every electrical engineer who got an FDA submission across the line in 2018. The Apple Watch ECG didn't ship because of marketing; it shipped because someone spent 24 months writing 510(k) paperwork. Thank you.