Internet of Things rekindles the Valley’s interest in hardware

The IoT will be characterised by a number of layers, but the two most relevant in the consumer world will be end devices and the more complex parts which they 'report' to. In the house, the end devices are likely to be 'one trick ponies', detecting light or a door opening, for example. More complex devices include the kind of thermostat which Nest is working on. It's not easy to put numbers to these areas, but it's possible that we may end up with some 30billion end devices and something like 3bn more complex parts. No wonder Google is interested. But there's another interesting thing going on, effectively behind the scenes. Nest is, apparently, just one of a large number of start ups in Silicon Valley working on IoT devices. A decade ago, the Valley – in general – lost interest in hardware, preferring to pursue things like website development and apps. The IoT has demonstrated the value of hardware and entrepreneurs haven't been slow to spot that. The question is whether a similar entrepreneurial spirit is abroad in the UK.