http://www.ericsson.com Ericsson ConsumerLab. Reflections on 10 hot consumer trends 2015. A collection of posts from the Ericsson Networked Society Blog

1. April 2015
A collection of posts from the
Ericsson Networked Society Blog
Reflections on
10 Hot Consumer
Trends 2015

2. 2 REFLECTIONS ON 10 HOT CONSUMER TRENDS 2015 CLICK HERE TO READ MORE
CONTENTS
Ericsson ConsumerLab has 20 years’ experience of studying
people’s behaviors and values, including the way they act and
think about ICT products and services. Ericsson ConsumerLab
provides unique insights on market and consumer trends.
Ericsson ConsumerLab gains its knowledge through a global
consumer research program based on interviews with 100,000
individuals each year, in more than 40 countries and 15 megacities
– statistically representing the views of 1.1 billion people.
Both quantitative and qualitative methods are used, and hundreds of
hours are spent with consumers from different cultures. To be close
to the market and consumers, Ericsson ConsumerLab has analysts
in all regions where Ericsson is present, developing a thorough
global understanding of the ICT market and business models.
All reports can be found at:
www.ericsson.com/consumerlab
The voice of the consumer
AUTHOR
MICHAEL BJÖRN
> Head of Research at
Ericsson ConsumerLab
Adjunct professor at
the Lund University
School of Economics
and Management
Ph.D. in data modeling
from the University of
Tsukuba in Japan
As part of his work in studying global consumer
trends and the process of assimilation of ICT into
everyday life, Michael Björn has been driving Ericsson
ConsumerLab’s annual 10 Hot Consumer Trends
reports since 2011.
Throughout his career, Michael has also
maintained a focus on writing which, among
other things, has resulted in academic papers,
a book on situational marketing and two novels.
He is currently a regular contributor to Tokyo-based
monthly music magazine Strange Days as well as
Ericsson’s Networked Society Blog; and it is from
the latter that the pages presented here are drawn.
Introduction
1. THE STREAMED FUTURE 4
Stream it down, Scotty!
2. HELPFUL HOMES 5
Why we keep looking at the smart home again and again
3. MIND SHARING 6
Will you use thoughts to send a smiley in the near future?
4. SMART CITIZENS 7
Smart is easy, changing perspective is hard!
5. THE SHARING ECONOMY 8
A Sunday afternoon experiment –
are you ready for the sharing economy?
6. THE DIGITAL PURSE 9
Consumers will get to pay with their
smartphones in the end
7. MY INFORMATION 10
When we put our journals online, we become journalists
8. LONGER LIFE 11
How much would living two years longer matter to you?
9. DOMESTIC ROBOTS 12
My household appliances run my life
10. CHILDREN CONNECT EVERYTHING 13
When children connect everything,
the screen age comes to an end

3. REFLECTIONS ON 10 HOT CONSUMER TRENDS 2015 3CLICK HERE TO READ MORE
It is said that the pace of change will never be
slower than it is right now, and this is certainly
my impression after working on Ericsson
ConsumerLab’s 10 Hot Consumer Trends for 2015.
Given that most people are creatures of habit, going through
daily routines that evolve only gradually, how can consumer
trends be pointing to such drastic change?
The answer is related to the use of smartphones. Once
people replace their bedroom alarm clock with a smartphone
app, the smartphone literally becomes the first and last thing
they use every day.Then, without thinking much about it,
people try out new apps and keep the ones they like. This
happens at such a rapid pace that they don’t even notice
that their attitudes and behaviors are changing faster than
ever before.
Trying out a couple of new apps and ultimately keeping
one or two of them for daily use doesn’t seem like a lot of
change – but it has a huge impact on society as a whole.
Do you remember as a child how irritating it was to meet
grandparents or relatives at big events and having to suffer
the “Oh, you have grown so much” commentary? When
you are the one changing, you don’t see it, even if it is so
striking to others.
Now that smartphone users are the ones changing, they
can easily accept services and products that quite recently
seemed beyond imagination.
But when we analyze and discuss consumer trends,
and try to conclude implications for what the future holds
in store, we again experience the shock of perspective
compression; we in fact become like your grandparents and
relatives at that yearly family get-together who can do nothing
but incredulously wonder at how much you have changed.
Some trends may peak later than others. “Mind sharing”,
for example, is about non-verbal communication and the idea
that we could use our thoughts to communicate directly. This
is probably still a few years away, although brain-scanning
headbands are already on sale for relaxation purposes. In
any case, communication services will definitely continue
to evolve rapidly.
Two trends that may also have a few years to go before
they peak include: “Longer life”, which is about how people
want to use wearables and cloud services to live healthier
and longer lives; and “Domestic robots,” which predicts an
increase in smarter household appliances such as robot
vacuum cleaners.
But others are quite close to becoming a reality, such as
“The sharing economy”, which highlights the ongoing shift
from products to services due to the convenience of using
things without the hassle of owning them, and to a certain
degree, the idea of your phone as “The digital purse”.
When doingTV and radio interviews, discussing the trends
at the Consumer Electronics Show in LasVegas and at the
Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and participating in
trend workshops with Ericsson colleagues or with customers,
I meet many who want to continue the discussion.
Is this really what is going to happen?
We want to know more
I took the discussion online with a series of personal
consumer trends reflections on the Ericsson Networked
Society Blog. These posts are now collected here. Hopefully
they will offer you some new perspectives on that moving
target we call the future.
Read more on the
10 Hot Consumer Trends for 2015

4. 4 REFLECTIONS ON 10 HOT CONSUMER TRENDS 2015 CLICK HERE TO READ MORE
1. The streamed
future
Stream it down, Scotty!
Of all the Ericsson ConsumerLab 10 Hot
Consumer Trends for 2015 and Beyond, the
idea of a streamed future may be the easiest
to understand – at least when taken at face
value. It just says that in 2015 more people
will watch streamed on-demand video on
a weekly basis than broadcast TV.
Next, we will be talking about how the overall hours we spend
watching streamed video will exceed the hours spent watching
broadcast TV; at the current pace of change, maybe that will
happen around 2020.
Streaming is overtaking broadcast for the simple reason that
consumers see more value in something that is delivered
when they want to watch it rather than when the clock hits
a certain hour. Simultaneously we are creatures of habit, so
although the value of getting something on demand is
obvious, the change happens gradually.
Games will soon be streamed – because why would people
want to wait another hour for the download to finish if they
can start playing already now? Books and magazines will also
be streamed – not always because the download takes too
long to wait for but also because it may be cheaper to pay
for just those sections that you read.
Music will be streamed because… oops, that already happened!
But the streamed future holds things that we today do not
consider to be media. In fact, the more our habits shift towards
streaming, the greater the demand will be for anything that can
be digitized and makes sense to consume on-demand.
So just reflect on your own day and consider what strict time
schedules you could imagine doing without. Although work
schedules are more flexible now than ever, surely more will
happen in that area? What will your office look like when
you start streaming it?
Education still seems to tick to the beat of a very scheduled
clock. But online schools have already started streaming
their lectures – and student demand could drive this
towards mainstream.
Fitness is another area: Before long, maybe our smartphones
and wearables will start streaming bits and pieces of expert
systems to aid in quantification or consultation in
various situations.
And how about physical products? It is still early days for 3D
printers, but they may eventually make it possible to stream
household things like kitchenware, tools and other things
made of plastic.
Imagine that you are having breakfast and manage to
fumble your cereal bowl. It drops onto the stone floor at an
unfortunate angle and breaks.You are not even dressed, so
going out to buy a new one is not even an option. Instead
you print a new one. Beam it down Scotty! Oh, I mean stream!
of us regularly
watch streamed video3/4

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2. Helpful homes
We see that consumers would like home sensors that do
things like alerting them to water and electricity issues,
providing updates about refrigerator temperature, and
delivering alerts when family members come and go.
Actually, we have done research similar to this in the past
as well – and to be quite honest, the results were quite
similar already a decade ago.You could, in fact, say that
this latest round of research did not really lead to any
groundbreaking insights. People see a lot of opportunity
in making homes a bit more responsive, and they have
done so for quite some time.
So why did we choose to elevate this to
“top trend” status right now?
The answer is all about the smartphone.
Smartphones provide a well-known interface for consumers
to do all of those things mentioned above with their homes.
The new bit with our research this time was that people see
the smartphone as the interface to the home.
And that interface will be increasingly unified as initiatives
like Apple’s HomeKit appliance certification program, KASH
(the Korean Association of Smart Homes, which combines
efforts from Samsung and LG under the same standard) and
Google’s Nest become increasingly visible during the year.
The smartphone also provides connectivity in the
many parts of the world where fixed internet access
is not commonly available. If someone is at home, and
they have a smartphone with mobile broadband, their
home could potentially go online at least some of the
time. That could mean a world of difference.
Then there is the question about the functionalities
that homes should be helpful with. Industry people
and analysts seem to argue a lot about what comes
first. Is it security? Is it regulating power consumption?
Is it remote control of media?
Sorry guys – but didn’t I already try to answer? It’s the
smartphone that comes first.
When homes become helpful, it is not about providing
functionality based on traditional business structure
demarcations or according to narrowly defined business
purposes that consumers may not even be aware exist.
It is about the convenience of a unified interface for a
more responsive and helpful home experience that cuts
across all those businesses – and probably more!
Why we keep looking at the
smart home again and again
Consumers are interested in having
their homes help them.

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3. Mind sharing
40%
To which the answer is: No – certainly not that I know of,
at least! Other comments have been critical: “That sounds
scary. Someone is going to control our minds!!”
The answer to these comments is slightly more complex.
The focus of this trend is actually non-verbal communication
in a more general sense. That is why we included the idea of
a smart watch that conveys touch gestures or pulse beats
to others, which is something already being implemented in
some products, notably the Apple Watch.
But that doesn’t mean someone is going to control your pulse!
The inspiration for asking consumers about directly sharing
their thoughts with others was the realization that there are
already products like the Muse headband that reads your
brain waves for yoga purposes. And if you can convey your
pulse today, why not your state of mind in the near future?
Something like an advanced smiley or emoji?
But does that mean consumers want someone to control
their minds? Not in the slightest!
Most people do seem to have instantly grasped the
underlying significance of this trend. Just because we have
seen amazingly fast development of new communication
services over the past few years, including a rich flora of
social networks, micro-blogging services, messages that
self-delete, instant messaging services and variations on
telephony with and without video doesn’t mean that this
fast-paced change is about to stop now.
If anything, change will speed up – and our research shows
that consumers are open to trying out new services in order
to be able to communicate with friends and loved ones in
richer ways. Services that people like will spread like wildfire,
and as many of them are just an app away, they will reach
popularity quicker than before.
So what’s the big deal if some of those services might seem
literally mind-boggling in the beginning? It’s just a new smiley :)
of smartphone owners would
like to use a wearable device
to communicate with others
directly through thoughts
Will you use thoughts to send
a smiley in the near future?
Some comments have been of an incredulous nature:
“What? Is Ericsson going to release a service like this !?!?!”

7. REFLECTIONS ON 10 HOT CONSUMER TRENDS 2015 7CLICK HERE TO READ MORE
4. Smart citizens
Smart is easy, changing
perspective is hard!
Some say that the smarter technology gets,
the dumber we become. We will degenerate
and become stupid, the argument goes.
Using that same logic, however, we should
probably no longer have legs.
Humans have been riding horses for at least the last
6,000 years, but we can still walk. Some of us even run
faster than any other humans known to history.
Horse saddles made us more mobile in the past –
and right now, information technology is making us
more informed. We are, in fact, becoming smart citizens,
and it is such an important change that we included
it in our 10 Hot Consumer Trends for 2015 and Beyond.
People increasingly expect to know what is going on
around them. That may involve finding out which areas
are too crowded, how to be more energy efficient, if the
water is drinkable, or getting updates on micro-climate
changes in pollution, humidity and temperature.
It is easy to come up with examples but difficult to
assess the cumulative effect on a city level. Becoming
a smarter citizen is easy; you just do the same thing
more efficiently. But as a result, city authorities will be
expected to do different things – and do them differently.
As we enter an era where authorities need to let smart
citizens lead and participate more than before, the ability to
switch perspective will become a critical local government
competence. Officials need to have the ability to not get
stuck in arcane policies out of habit.
But before we blame politicians for everything, we need to
get better at changing perspectives ourselves. I mean all of
us! Everyone I talk to agrees that the idea of smart citizens
is indeed important, but continue to talk about deploying
systems and building “smart cities”.
Hello, I just changed the perspective on smart cities and
turned the idea on its head! Bottom-up instead of top-down!
Citizens everywhere organically grow smart cities – and
this will change power structures. Information technology is
making us smarter, not dumber – but in the process we are
discovering that the real challenge is to change perspective!

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5. The sharing economy
Here’s a fun exercise to while away a lazy Sunday afternoon:
Go through your home and make note of all the possessions
that you do not use every week. Don’t forget cupboards,
wardrobes and storage rooms. And if you have a basement
or garage, don’t forget those either!
Now, my guess is that you have a very long list and you are
already thinking that this Sunday afternoon has not been so
lazy after all.
For each item on the list, ask yourself if you couldn’t just
simply get rid of it. For most items, I believe the answer to
that question would be “no”. Many items you probably want
to keep simply because you are attached to them for various
reasons. But there will also be many items that you keep
because you use them regularly, although not so often.
There will also be items that you may not have used for a
very long time, but that you keep in the eventuality that you
will at some point need to use them, and the cost or hassle
of getting a new one would be prohibitive. So you keep
a lot of stuff just in case – am I right?
Now go through those last two categories of items – those
you use less often, and those you keep just in case – and
you will have a very good understanding of the full potential
of the sharing economy. In the sharing economy, you would
simply rent from someone nearby when need arises.
In our report about the 10 Hot Consumer trends for 2015
and Beyond, we talk about areas that are already visible
and interesting to consumers such as car/bike sharing
and renting other people’s leisure equipment, rooms and
household appliances.
From a societal perspective, saving resources as well as
the environment are, of course, positive aspects of this.
But seen from the perspective of the industries where the
sharing economy is already happening, it leads to lower
demand for products and a higher demand for services
instead. Consumers see the opportunity to save money
and the convenience of instantly being able to use without
having to own – both of which will pose new business
challenges and opportunities.
A Sunday afternoon experiment – are
you ready for the sharing economy?
Half of all smartphone owners are open to the
idea of renting out their personal appliances,
spare rooms and leisure equipment, as it is
convenient and saves money.
What industry do you work in?
How will your industry handle
the switch in demand from
products to services?

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6. The digital purse
Back in 2007, we asked people in Tokyo to empty all of the
contents of their wallet or purse onto a table and talk about
what they had. The average number of cards people carried
around was 28 – things like bank credit cards, store credit
cards, IDs, cash cards, train passes, tickets, membership
cards, point cards, commuter cards, repair receipts,
pre-order certificates, and more.
Most extreme of all were women in their 30s, who averaged
36 cards. And that’s just cards – I can tell you that our table
was full of scribbled notes, coins, bills, purchase receipts,
buttons and stamps as well – and the list goes on.
We had invited them to show us all this because they
were all Osaifu-Keitai mobile wallet users. Osaifu-Keitai
was developed by NTT DoCoMo and integrated in their
mobile phones in 2004. Later, it was also licensed to the
other mobile operators Vodafone (now Softbank) and au.
The main reason why all of these people had signed up for
the mobile wallet service was the obvious one – they wanted
to reduce the number of items in their wallets. Or maybe
get rid of the wallet completely. When we met them, they
certainly hadn’t gotten to that point yet – many worried that
they would not be able to pay if the phone battery would
run out. This fear was in fact unfounded as battery wasn’t
needed for payments, but it does point to some of the
challenges with the mobile wallet.
And although they thought the mobile wallet could still
be improved, they saw the wide-ranging eco-system of
participating stores and transport companies involved as
sufficient – because it encompassed not only payments but
also point and bonus systems as well as commuting tickets.
And if we would meet these people again today? I’m sure
that their wallets and purses would be as full as ever.
Why? What went wrong? The global
smartphone phenomenon happened.
The Japanese mobile wallet was introduced before
smartphones, and when smartphones started becoming
popular in Japan they of course had no Osaifu-Keitai.
So the system never really got off the ground.
The reason for us to include the Digital Purse among our
10 Hot Consumer Trends for 2015 and Beyond almost a
decade later is that the smartphone is now showing enough
signs of encompassing a similar mobile wallet approach
– meaning not only technology, but also the idea of a fully
fledged eco-system so that people can actually use the
stuff across situations and activities in daily life.
In other words, we are back to what was started a decade
ago – but now potentially on a global scale! And as you can
see from our research, consumers are still as optimistic
about this as ever.
You may take the stance that as consumers we never
learn – but my view is that we get what we want in the end.
And just like then, we still bring our phones everywhere we
go – so why should we not get to pay with them, in the end,
although it may cause a bit of battery anxiety for a while!
Consumers will get to pay with
their smartphones in the end
You would be amazed to find out what people
carry around in their wallets and purses.

10. 10 REFLECTIONS ON 10 HOT CONSUMER TRENDS 2015 CLICK HERE TO READ MORE
When we put our journals online, we become journalists
In our research at Ericsson ConsumerLab, we have seen that
consumers are less concerned about issues related to personal
information and online privacy than many of the experts in the field.
Whereas the experts tend to see a big backlash coming,
consumers say that online benefits outweigh concerns.
There are many reasons for this. One obvious one is that
consumers may not know the extent to which different data
points about them potentially could be connected. Another
reason is that most people don’t think they are important
enough. If an influential politician has a phone that can be
tracked and leaks information, that may have disastrous
consequences. But if I’m an average Joe or Jane, who
cares what street I’m walking down?
A third reason is that consumers may find it difficult to
compare time perspectives. If giving away information gives
me better service or better offers now, why should I think
about the potential cumulative effect on my integrity a few
years down the line?
Finally, people are suffering from information overload.
No one can read all the fine print; we simply click OK whatever
it is and actually don’t know much of what we have agreed to.
At this point it could be easy to conclude that consumers
are dumb. They don’t know what’s best for them, and they
don’t even have the sense to listen to the warnings from
the experts. That argument would be easy but it would also
be wrong. I am not dumb. Are you? I didn’t think so. And
consumers – they are us.
In fact, the “My Information” trend in our 10 Hot Consumer
Trends for 2015 and Beyond report shows quite clearly that
people do value privacy in areas where it really counts, such
as money and communication.
And when needed, consumers also seem to be taking
action. During the days of the “Occupy Wall Street”
movement, we did an interview with one of the organizers.
She instructed protesters how to film and record everything
that happened – in order to make sure that laws were not
broken and human rights were not abused. By watching
the authorities from below, she made sure that people were
not harmed – and if they were, there would be personal
information available to bring lawbreakers to court. If you
report stuff, you are a reporter. Or a journalist.
Similarly, already in 2012, while analyzing a survey, we
saw that over 40 percent of all social network users said
they wrote comments about products or brands online.
That is not dumb at all – that is understanding the power of
mass media and that brands can no longer act in ways that
cause anger online.
In the past, mass media has been called the “fourth branch
of government,” with the other branches being legislative,
executive and judicial. But with the internet, all of us are
becoming part of that fourth branch.The internet is turning
us into investigative journalists by default, and even though
that journalism may be of the slacker variety, it actually works.
In Ericsson ConsumerLab’s surveys, the number one reason
for using social media is to read the posts of others. Imagine if
the number one reason for watchingTV was to follow the news,
and you get the sense of how powerful that can potentially be.
When we put our journals online, not only do we expose
information about ourselves, we also become journalists.
of smartphone
owners
would like
communication to be
EπcЯ’Pt3D
7. My information

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8. Longer life
The top application turned out to be stress reduction – as
respondents believed that monitoring and regulating their
stress levels could increase life expectancy by two years.
This caused some internal debate: Is two years a lot? Is
it little? Are these expectations realistic?
When I visited the Neolithic village of Skara Brae in the
Orkney archipelago in northern Scotland, I was impressed
that the people who lived there 5,000 years ago seemed so
modern in many ways – they lived in apartments and had
primitive versions of flushing toilets and central heating.
Yet the typical life expectancy for villagers was not much
more than 20 years. To a Skara Braean, two extra years
might almost seem like an extra lifetime; a 10 percent
extension of their life. However, malnutrition was common
and prolonging life by reducing stress would have seemed
totally unrealistic.
But to me, trying to quickly get this blog post written on
a Saturday afternoon between weekend grocery shopping
and having to drive my son to tennis practice, getting
two extra years by reducing stress seems all too realistic
Life expectancy, it seems, is a relative term.
In our study, we asked about a total of seven
cloud-based services, some with and others without a
wearable component. If we added up the total cumulative
life expectancy from respondents’ answers, the average
was 10 years. But we decided against talking about 10 extra
years as we hadn’t asked respondents about the cumulative
effect of their answers and the idea that these technologies
could extend life by 10 percent or more seems so unrealistic.
Or does it?
Last year, when invited to speak at an event in South Korea,
I met up with Kim, with whom I had spent five intense years
as a fellow student getting my Ph.D. He subsequently
returned to Seoul and had a career working with
government internet policy. We were having a fantastic
dinner at a traditional kimchi restaurant, when Kim said
“Michael, we must write a book together!” When I responded
that I wasn’t sure I could find the time, Kim pointed out to
me that we had all the time in the world since we would
live to be 150 years old.
150 years old? Kim had not joined some mysterious sect;
he was merely referring to his experiences of meeting with
various life science companies.
As I mentioned, life expectancy is a relative term.
Although my friend’s expectations may be on the extreme
side, this discussion will likely continue. For this reason, we
have followed up our trends work with a report called
“Living longer: wellness and the internet”. It won’t take two
years to read, so check it out if you have the time!
How much would living two
years longer matter to you?
When asking about the benefits of
wearables such as wristbands, smart
watches, and so on, in our 10 Hot
Consumer Trends for 2015 and Beyond
report, we found that people see a
concrete potential to live healthier
and longer lives.
Source: Ericsson ConsumerLab Analytical Platform, October 2014
Base: 5,024 iPhone/Android smartphone users in Johannesburg, London, Mexico
City, Moscow, NewYork, San Francisco, São Paulo, Shanghai, Sydney,Tokyo
+1.9
YEARS
YEARS
+1.8
+0.5

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9. Domestic robots
Will robots take over our lives?
On the other hand, I do not belong to the third of
smartphone owners we talked to who could imagine
a robot keeping them company. So obviously there is
a limit to how much I am willing to let domestic robots
take over at home.
The question is, how do I find that limit?
Or maybe that is not the question.
When I think about my life, I realize machines already run
it. However, these machines are neither robots nor smart;
they are the dumbest of dumb appliances. I have to buy
them lots of electricity (gasoline in some cases!), I have
to read manuals thicker than Dostoyevsky’s “Crime And
Punishment”, I have to repair them and pay insurance for
them, and I have to clean them and move them in and out
of storage. And then, to add injury to insult, I have to spend
hours upon hours operating them in order to do the things
they were designed to do!!
Instead, I need robots smart enough to do more on their
own, in order to free up my time.
It would be nice too if a little robotic intelligence enabling
appliances to become more multifunctional would make
me need fewer than I have today. The sheer number
I now have clutters up my home: one for ironing, one for
washing clothes and another for drying clothes; one for
washing dishes, one for slicing and another for dicing.
The list goes on…
So the real question is, what is the limit
before dumb appliances run our lives?
I have gone over that limit, and then some, already.
How about you? Dumb appliances take up my time and
my home space. Having a domestic robot would not be a
threat; it would be an opportunity to regain some control!
Well, as far as my household chores go, they can take over as much
as they want. And it seems I am not alone, because in our 10 Hot
Consumer Trends for 2015 and Beyond we have a trend showing that
the domestic robot most people want is one that does your laundry!
of consumers think a range of domestic
robots that could help with everyday
chores such as laundry and cooking will
be common in households by 2020
64%

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10. Children connect
everything
When children connect
everything, the screen age
comes to an end
Ever since the TV became popular in the
late 50s, we have spent a lot of time in front
of screens. Still, when I talk to people about
the trend “Children connect everything” in
our Ericsson ConsumerLab report 10 Hot
Consumer Trends for 2015 and Beyond,
I am often met by the attitude that “I don’t
want my kids to sit in front of screens anymore.”
This trend is about the expectation that children who
have grown up with tablets, smartphones and the internet
will naturally want everything in their lives connected
and interactive.
To reassure worried parents, I believe that when we reach
this level of connectivity, we will no longer need to hunch
behind screens. To the contrary: We will see the end of the
screen age that we have lived in for more than half a century!
While it is true that younger people spend more time in front
of screens than older people, our research shows that the
difference measured in hours is not that big.The big difference
is that younger people spend more time in front of interactive
screens (computers, tablets, smartphones, game consoles)
rather than the passive TV screen.
We all want our kids to be out in the open, breathing
fresh air, playing soccer and growing up to be strong and
healthy – no matter how we spent our own childhoods.
And connecting things can actually make this easier –
one interesting example is the Adidas Smart Ball.
This is a soccer ball that collects stats on how you kick it.
Today, you need a screen to read those stats but what if
such stats could be displayed directly on the ball?
Children are not passive behind their screens. As they start
connecting other things, they will be just as interactive with
them, without having to hide behind screens. When we
reach the end of this screen age that started with the TV in
the 1950s, young people will be just as active in front of the
world as they are now in front of their screens!

14. EAB-15:020854 Uen
© Ericsson AB 2015
We are a world leader in the rapidly changing environment of communications
technology – providing equipment, software and services to mobile and fixed network
operators all over the globe.
Some 40 percent of global mobile traffic runs through networks we have supplied,
and we manage networks that serve more than 1 billion subscribers globally every
day. With more than 35,000 granted patents, we have one of the industry’s strongest
patent portfolios.
Our vision is to be the prime driver in an all-communicating world. By using innovation
to empower people, business and society, we are enabling the Networked Society,
in which everything that can be connected is connected.
Ericsson
SE-126 25 Stockholm, Sweden
Telephone +46 10 719 00 00
www.ericsson.com