France seems to be ahead in the number of “connected devices” – like Germany, though, it lacks the support for the start-ups and the companies to make a boom out of a significant trend. According to Renaud Ménerat, president of the french mobile marketing association, three quarters of the connected devices sold in the States are actually of french origin.

–La France semble plutôt en avance sur les objets connectés, comment l’expliquer ?

Dans ce domaine, on est bon ! Les pouvoirs publics semblent avoir compris qu’il y a un vrai mouvement et y apportent un support de poids avec la BPI, la French Tech et ce type d’initiatives. Et cela fonctionne : les trois quart des objets connectés les plus vendus aux Etats-Unis viennent de France ! Nous sommes des champions en la matière pour ce qui est du domaine business-to-consumer. Il faudrait maintenant s’appuyer sur ces savoir-faire pour continuer de se développer en France et en Europe, et axer nos efforts sur le business-to-business. Les rapports gouvernementaux aussi le soulignent. —

(via Renaud Ménerat, président de la Mobile Marketing Association : « 3/4 des objets connectés vendus aux Etats-Unis sont Français ! » | FFTELECOMS.)

RapidTVnews quotes a study by Zenith Opti Media in saying, that regarding the penetration rate, France is second highest (ith a strong 35.7% penetration rate)  – behind Norway (38.8%), but well ahead of the United States (19.4%) – in the use of connected devices (smartphones, tablets, connected TVs), according to a new study by media planning agency ZenithOptimedia.

Japan comes in at position 18 with a 9.8% penetration rate.

The results are due to French people’s interest in smartphones (54% penetration rate), connected TVs through IPTV boxes (38%), as well as tablets’ growing success, which are already present in 15% of French homes, the study says.

France looks back on the tradition of the Minitel, which has become an ubiquitous connected device in times when a modem still made beeping noises and lines didn’t offer more than a theoretical maximum of 2,400 baud throughput – this explains that France definitely has the longest tradition in connceted devices in households in Europe as a historical fact.

Ericsson sees a 50 Billion connected devices coming up in the course of the very next years, leaving aside the Googles, Apples and Facebooks of this world, as these are contributing to autonomous and dedicated services.

Ericsson expects the cost of M2M cellular devices to decrease by 15% annually, which will lower the threshold for any usage imaginable to be implemented with decreasing cost and adding value (and profit). Of course,  there is a downside to this exponential growth. The need to carry the data off will increase and this creates a demand for ubiquitous broadband cellular coverage (i.e. 4G and later on 5G). This, again puts a strain on the providers of network capacities, leaving the business model for those CSPs still in the unloved legacy-mode of having to offer dark bitpipes. This is truly not to the liking of CSPs, but unless there is creative destruction in the market by some disruptive model, the roles of carriers won’t change. Somehow, the profitability is with the service providers rtather than with the capacity providers.

Nevertheless, Ericsson states from their point of view, that the APAC region will be key to the 50 Billion devices threshold.

So why is it that France is so much ahead of the crowd?

Concentra Marketing Research finds the answer in the legacy sister of internet media: old fashioned television! Smart TV, like those of market leader Samsung are ubiquitous in french households, France leading the pack again with a penetration rate of smart TV of 42%. However, Smart TV as such has a lot of teething aches, for example for their UI and customer facing functions being less convincing than those of -e.g.- smartphones.

Plenty of room for the design from France.