• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, June 14, 2016

There are connected devices and then there are connected devices.

With many billions of coming Internet-connected smart objects, devices, ranging from appliances to home-assisting services, marketers may think there’s a window to lie back and wait.

In five years, there will be 28 billion connected devices, according to the recent Ericsson Mobility Report. Of those 16 billion will be IoT devices while 9 billion will be mobile phones.

But for now, the magic number is 8 billion, at least as it pertains to audio video connections around the world.

That’s how many connected smartphones, tablets, personal computers, TVs, TV-attached devices and audio devices there are now, according to the latest Connected Device Market Monitor from IHS Technology.

On average, that equates to four devices per household. In North American, it’s closer to 13 connected devices per household, making it the most saturated in the world. Here’s a breakdown of the 8 billion connected audio video devices globally:

• 3.4 Billion—Smartphones
• 1.8 Billion – PCs
• 1.4 Billion – Audio hardware
• .73 Billion – Tablets
• .51 Billion – TV-attached devices
• .29 Billion -- TVs

Smartphones added about half a billion new devices to the market since a year ago and they now outnumber tablets by 6 to 1.

In the word of streaming video, Netflix addresses 339 million connected devices in the U.S., which is the equivalent of addressing 32% of the audio-video hardware landscape.

While the many billions of IoT devices coming start to arrive, marketers will be focused on creating new forms of messaging to flow through those devices.

Meanwhile, 8 billion devices already are part of the network and they come with AV capability.

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The MediaPost IoT Marketing Forum is being held Aug. 3 in New York. Check it out the agenda here