Early on it became apparent that as devices proliferated in capabilities, appropriate classification would become challenging. For example, many years ago it was clear that a phone was really just an application on a connected device, co-existing along with many other applications on the device. Accordingly we settled on the concept of ‘Primary Hardware Type’ as a term, but even this has occasionally been challenged when it has not been obvious what the primary purpose of a device is.
There are now over 50 Primary Hardware Types defined in DeviceAtlas, with the most common being ‘Mobile Phone’ with some 71k models. ‘Tablet’ was the second type added, and remarkably there are now close to 18k tablets identified. What proportion of these could have been profitable for their manufacturers is hard to say; it is a crowded market. At the rarer end of the spectrum are such devices as connected medical devices and bathroom scales; now that they are identifiable in the programmatic advertising landscape, we look forward to the day when ads are served to them.
It is a point of pride for the DeviceAtlas data team to appropriately classify devices; this blog describes a particularly challenging one, which so far has defied classification.
However, we may have finally been forced to admit defeat, throw in the towel, and declare a new category of connected device called ‘Thing’. It appears defensible on the face of it; there is after all the Internet of Things, so why should there not be Things found in it? We feel that if we cannot define it, then our customers will probably accept our designation, and it at least gives us a place to put the array of unusual connected devices to be found in the wild. Given the day that is in it, it seems appropriate to celebrate this new designation: Primary Hardware Type = "Thing".