IoT & Connected Devices — 2021 Predictions and Outcomes
Year six. Worth admitting upfront: the 2020 prediction post — written January 8th, 2020 — called the structural surge from work-from-home and telehealth before the pandemic catalyst hit. I'll take credit for the shape; the catalyst was unforeseeable. Now to the score.
How 2020 actually played out
Apple Watch SE shipped September 2020. $279, exactly the price point I called. Cleaned up the gap below Series 6 and consumed most of the Series 3 inventory. Hit.
Pandemic-driven IoT surge — bigger than the structural-only forecast. Connected fitness devices, smart-home adds, telehealth tech all exploded in Q2-Q3. Peloton's connected-fitness installed base cleared 1M by Q4 (the prediction held); but the speed of the curve was 2x what I called pre-pandemic. Hit on shape, undershot on magnitude.
AirTags did NOT ship in 2020. Rumored heavily through the year — the "Find My"/tracker plumbing even leaked in iOS betas — but the year closed with no product. Miss on timing. Filed-bug rather than wrong-call; the thing is clearly built and waiting on an event.
Project CHIP consumer products: still 18+ months out. The working group spent 2020 building, and its spec target has already drifted into 2021 with no consumer hardware in sight. Hit on the prediction (we said it would slip).
Body-as-sensor-array reached the median active user. Apple Watch + AirPods Pro + Oura Ring became a real package by year-end. CGM (continuous glucose monitor) penetration among non-diabetic fitness early adopters was below my hopes but the Levels Health waitlist + Supersapiens launch validated the curve. Hit.
Sonos headphones still don't exist. The June 2019 rumor still hasn't shipped. I called slip-to-2021; the truth is closer to "may never ship at all under that brand." Half-hit.
Camera consolidation continued. Wyze became the price floor. Arlo survived (didn't get acquired, but Verisure-owned Arlo cleaned up European market). Logitech Circle was discontinued. Hit.
Net 2020 scorecard: roughly 80% prediction accuracy — the lowest of the streak, mostly because the pandemic broke the predictability of timing (AirTags slipped, others accelerated). Structural calls held; calendar calls slipped.
What I got wrong
I called Sonos's headphone product to land in 2021. Twelve months on, the rumor's older but no clearer. The company kept investing in speakers + portable through 2020 instead.
I also missed the scale of pandemic-driven connected fitness. Mirror (acquired by Lululemon June 2020 for $500M), Tonal closing a fresh raise, Hydrow, Tempo — the whole vertical of "screen + bike/rower/weight + subscription" expanded from one company (Peloton) to a real category in 12 months. I should have called the fitness vertical not just Peloton.
The pattern under all of it: a forecast has two parts, and only one of them survived 2020. The structural part — what happens and why — held; the calendar part — the exact date it lands — did not. A pandemic is a catalyst, and a catalyst changes timing, not direction. So the calls that named a force (work-from-home pulls telehealth and home fitness forward) landed; the calls that named a quarter (AirTags in fall) missed by exactly the amount the catalyst moved the date.
2021 predictions
1. Apple AirTags finally ship. Spring event, April-ish, $29 single / $99 four-pack. UWB-based ultra-precise finding via iPhone 11+. Tile will sue or whine; doesn't matter, the category creator is in trouble.
2. Matter ships v1.0 spec by year-end, not consumer products. The standards group target is Q4 2021; bet on a Q1 2022 actual ship. First Matter-certified consumer products land H2 2022. Standards always slip.
3. Wi-Fi 6E hits enthusiast routers. Eero, ASUS, Netgear ship 6GHz-capable models in Q2-Q3. Mass market still Wi-Fi 6 only.
4. Apple Watch Series 7 ships with redesigned case. First major industrial-design refresh since Series 4. September. Larger screen, possibly blood-glucose sensor (which won't ship — they'll demo a research collaboration without an FDA path yet).
5. Supply chain crunch hits connected devices in Q3. Chip shortage that's already gating GPUs and autos will hit smart-home in H2. Echo Show 8 backorders, Apple Watch S7 launch-day stock shortages. (Already starting; will get worse before it gets better.)
6. Ring vs Nest doorbell competition reaches a draw. Both shipped strong product refreshes in late 2020. Market shares hold roughly at current ratios. The interesting category creator now is battery-powered cellular outdoor security cams (Arlo Go, Reolink Argus).
7. Connected health gets a regulatory tailwind. FDA's Software-as-Medical-Device (SaMD) framework keeps maturing; expect 5-10 additional FDA clearances on consumer wearables in 2021 (Apple Watch sleep apnea? unlikely; Oura overnight respiratory rate? more likely). The medical-device side of the wearables category is finally compounding.
8. The first IoT class-action settles publicly for $50M+. Almost certainly default-credentials baby monitor or camera with leaked footage. Hot-take prediction; could be Q1, could be Q4.
Lined up by how much I'd stake on each, the year's bets aren't equal. The standards and supply-chain calls are nearly structural — I'd defend them hard. AirTags and a Series 7 redesign are well-sourced but calendar-bound, so the catalyst caveat applies. The class-action settlement is the one I'm taking with eyes open: directionally likely, impossible to date.
Gratitude beat
Big thanks to every supply-chain coordinator scrambling to find STM32s and ESP32s through 2020. The fact that you could buy a Nest Mini in November 2020 at all was a small miracle. Thank you.