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23 in growing numbers, with an overwhelming focus on reducing energy costs through monitoring and adapting applications. Healthcare applications are also popular for an aging European population. Asia is currently the fastest growing market, driven not only by a large, innovative telecom industry, but also by the need to save energy in a region where an inadequate infrastructure can lead to energy shortages. Gartner predicts there will be 20.8 billion Internet of Things (IoT)- enabled devices by 2020, while Strategy Analytics anticipates that Americans will spend up to $48 billion on these devices by 2020. Globally, the IoT market is estimated at $1.7 trillion. In the United States, one in four internet users already owns a Smart Home device (most often a security system or home automation device), with adoption strongest among men with a household income greater than $100,000. To a greater or lesser degree, the Connected Home has arrived. But how did it get here and where is it going? Looking at home technology in an evolutionary context is valuable—if not essential. The Enabled Home By the end of the 20th century, most homes contained items once considered extravagant luxuries, from refrigerators to multiple television sets to programmable thermostats. Manufacturers with expertise in miniaturization and digitization were leading the way, developing technology that grew richer in features while taking up less space and costing less. While the home's occupants benefited from greater safety, comfort, and convenience, they still had to deal with two significant (by today's standards, anyway) constraints. The first was that these products needed to be activated by people in order for them to respond. For example, when a person turned on an appliance, opened a garage door, set a thermostat, or armed a security system, their physical action was required before the electronics could react. Second, enabled products were not connected. Manufacturers who created them typically enhanced the discrete functionality of the products themselves, but without integrating those products with anything else in the home or environment. While some products might have used sensor technology (e.g., for motion detection), the products themselves were not interoperable— one product could not react to a sensor in another product. The Connected Home As sensors and interconnects have become more pervasive, and cloud technology more robust, homes evolved into today's Connected Home. Devices and appliances can now connect with each other and the cloud through greater interoperability. Additionally, human actuation is becoming less necessary. Devices such as the Amazon Echo with the Alexa Voice Service, the Google Home smart speaker and Apple's HomePod with Siri make the home an increasingly connected, interoperable environment. Occupants can now prompt more actions through voice commands rather than physically pressing a button, and devices are more programmable to act at certain times or conditions without human intervention. Security, cost savings, social engagement, and health and wellness are more easily integrated into the daily routine, rather than another to-do or afterthought. Still, interoperability of devices remains a "work in progress." Competing technology ecosystems that place myriad products under central control now vie for prominence in the marketplace, and monitoring and control of different devices not made to work with these platforms can be clunky if not impossible. The Connected Home is the present, but the future will demand more seamless interoperability. The Proactive Home The next evolution is speculative, but its seeds have already taken root. Leveraging growing artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing, and visual recognition, the home itself will acquire the ability to sense—to "watch," "listen," "smell," and "feel." At the heart of this ability will be sensors that can detect movement, temperature, occupancy, etc. By 2025, approximately 80 billion devices will be connected to the internet. Gartner projects that by 2022, a typical home could contain more than 500 smart devices. Using artificial intelligence that combines data from across these devices, the house will learn, and take "responsibility" for functions such as switching on lights at certain times of day, setting temperature based on the weather, suggesting music, and creating grocery lists. "I think that the individual may not know what's happening, these cognitive systems will ooze into our lives," says John Cohn, IBM Fellow for the Internet of Things.

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