What’s up with the Internet of Things, you almost surely didn’t ask yourself this morning. But maybe you asked Alexa about the weather or Siri for driving directions. So I’ll write about it anyway. Let’s start with a report from VoiceLabs, which provides analytics to voice app developers. The report is quite detailed and well worth a look. Headline finding is hardware shipments will grow from 1.7 million devices in 2015 to 6.5 million in 2016 to a projected 24.5 million in 2017. This means that (a) voice devices are hot and (b) this is the year they go mainstream. Also intriguing: just 11% of consumers who own one device will buy a competing device. This means that grabbing share is important. It also suggests a society that’s split into tribes having different experiences and isolated from each other. It’s already hard to live in a mixed household of Apple and Android users; it may soon be almost impossible.