Beacons continue to be one of the most distributed of connected objects and some new stats highlight some of the growth across consumer categories. Beacon shipments in the U.S. already passed a million units last year, according to ABI Research, with projections of the number passing 400 million within five years. Now come some stats from Sensoro, a two-year-old Chinese beacon company, which has deployed 110,000 beacons in Asia.

Activities between beacons and Wi-Fi continue to one-up each other. Just a few days ago, InMarket publicly launched its new beacon data tracking system that can predict the best times and locations to send an ad when the technology concludes that the consumer is due for their next store visit

Now it looks like there may be more than 6 billion connected things in use around the world as soon as next year, with most of them being used by consumers. While many projections around the scope of the Internet of Things tend to look at several years away, one study just out takes a look at the short-term future, as in the next year.

There's being beaconed and then there's using beacon data for better targeting. The most commonly considered use for beacons is to use their locations to deliver targeted content based to the smartphone-carrying consumers who agree to accept the messaging.

If nothing else, The Internet of Things is about very big numbers. Not all the numbers projected from various sources are the same, but they are, nonetheless, substantial. There are 10 billion devices now connected to the internet, according to one new report.

The Internet of Things has many facets, one of which is scale. Not all IoT projects will start big, of course, as businesses test and learn what works for them and what doesn't. But even a small start can be relatively big, leading to something even magnitudes bigger.

Consumers see the smart home coming but many aren't necessarily trying to be at the head of the line to sign up. As inevitable as it is, smart home technology is exciting to just over a third (36%) of consumers, based on a new study.

The smart home may be just around the corner but consumers are somewhat leery of what they'll have to do to make it work. While most (68%) consumers think smart homes will be common as smartphones within 10 years, they don't necessarily want to personally do the work to make them possible, based on a new study.

Just as there's been a never-ending discussion between apps vs. mobile websites, there now may be a similar debate between beacons vs. Wi-Fi for in-store marketing. While beacons have taken mindshare and budgets, their use is still somewhat limited, notes a new report.

When it comes to wearable technology, the perception of Apple can't be topped. Smartphone owners, regardless of their mobile preference, consider Apple to be the "coolest brand" for wearable technology, based on a new study. It also turns out that functions are more important than fashion and battery life is not a significant factor in the purchase decision, according to the study by Juniper Research.