You know we live in astonishing times when you can start your car by talking into your phone. But the era of the Internet of Everything--for all the great technology it has begun to enable--is filled with challenges for electronics design engineers.
Bill of materials, especially for tiny and ubiquitous IoT nodes, need to shrink if the market is going to expand. Five-dollar BOMs will not unlock big market opportunities, so the pressure on miniaturization, integration, and more efficient design will only increase.
IoT is an energy-driven application space. The premium on battery life and power management for devices will be exceptional; the focus on operations per watt is extraordinary.
And unfortunately for electronics designers, the dawn of the natural user interface era comes after years of technology breakthroughs (think Siri, Google Now). Those successes have created consumer expectations that only heap onto today's design teams more time-to-market pressures for tomorrow's solutions.
Just a portion of the IoT--the smart home's systems of systems (pictured below)--gives you a sense of the challenge ahead.