Guess what, we don't need an internet of things. It's not going to happen and you can tell that because it's been hyped for a decade now and has not produced any product that anyone buys.
While I don't really see the use case for private individuals, IoT technology is very interesting on the factory floor. Tracking parts and getting sensor data from all kinds of machines is quite useful.
Yeah I don't really buy the retail argument for IOT, but for large organizations it can make a ton of sense. I previously worked for a company [0] that did remote sensors for water meters - they saved a fortune on sending out technicians to read the meter, and avoided all the problems with usage estimations.
Why do you think that private individuals wouldn't also benefit from being able to track things? I'm quite forgetful so being able to track my possessions would be quite useful to me.
How much cheaper is electricity because meters report back and you don't have to come and read them one by one. How many times has the garbage truck passed by my street only to see no trash container out to be collected? IoT means making everything intelligent so that we can better coordinate our resource usage. A traffic light that knows when the tram is coming ahead or behind schedule, how many people are on it, how many cars are to queue on the red lights can make a better decision on which one should be prioritized, possibly saving a fair amount of electricity in the process.
Or, perhaps, a carpet that knows it's clean (let's say the kids are off to summer camp) can tell the Roomba it doesn't need to do its thing today.
We don't need it like we didn't need cellphones, smartphones, smart watches, electric cars. For most of my childhood we didn't even need personal computers.
I'm not sure that this is at all true. Maybe I'm using too broad a definition of IoT, but most people I know have some kind of IoT device. Admittedly, my direct friends are probably representative of a specific group, but...
My apartment a few years ago (wasn't a luxury place) came with a Nest thermostat. My parents have a Nest thermostat as well as a smart lock. My sister has a smart toothbrush. My friend uses Tile to keep track of a couple of her grandmother's important things. I went all in on Phillips Hue across my house, as well as a bunch of other things. It's not all sunshine and rainbows, but it's been a net positive.
HomeKit (and any Android equivalents) have brought this stuff pretty mainstream, and in a mostly-just-works way.
IOT in the nutshell is simply about mapping and tracking physical objects. Air or water quality, building, road and bridge condition, street lights, traffic, and countless more applications. All of those that are currently done manually, imprecisely, or infrequently. Just because it's low profile, not available in store, or not yet achievable using current technology, doesn't mean it does not or will not happen.