The network comes home

Working parents will soon have one less thing to worry about. Their smartphones will let them know when their children arrive at home. And there'll be a lasagne waiting for them, cooked in an oven controlled from the office using an app. If the kids eat on the sofa instead of at the table, the smartphone will tell their parents. And the parents can shut off the TV or games console remotely until their homework is done.

Mom and Dad as Big Brother? This may sound like a dystopian future, but it's already on display at the International Consumer Electronics Fair (IFA) in Berlin. And Reinhard Zinkann of the German Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers' Association says this technology will become an inevitable part of the average household.

"The future will be a fully networked house, from the alarm system to the heating and air conditioning and window blinds," he said. "It is quite clear the world will change with increasing speed in the next five to 10 years."

Internet everywhere

Ubiquitous internet access has fundamentally changed the electronics industry. Almost every device shown at the IFA can go online in one way or another.

The industry's latest hope are wearables. Samsung is showing off a wristwatch that has all the features of a smartphone and can be used to make calls. Next week, rival Apple will likely introduce a similar device.

Other manufacturers are pinning their hopes on thin bracelets crammed with computer technology, such as pulse meters and sleep monitors.

Carsten Müller of computer manufacturer Acer is confident that wearables have a great future - and not just sleek fitness watches, but necklaces and new designs in jewelry.

But most wearables at the IFA are watches that perform the functions of a smartphone in a more discreet form factor.

"A smartwatch makes sense if I need a large touch display to display different kinds of information," Müller said, adding that the goal was to make this kind of technology even easier to use and more convenient.

A networked society

That's a cause nearly all tech companies have taken up, because they want the "Internet of Things" to have a broader appeal than just gizmos for geeks. It has to be fun: A wireless headset that looks like an oversized diving mask, its user transported to a virtual world; televisions as big as cinema screens with images that seem sharper than reality. It's entertainment as an immersive experience.

Samsung's European head Sunny Lee said the company's goal was to develop "exciting products" through a deep understanding of people's lifestyle and preferences. And that excitement is something consumers should associate first and foremost with Samsung, he said, and not just with a particular gadget.

Internet addiction

But excitement means Internet - and the faster and more mobile, the better. And this is also being announced at the IFA.

Vodafone Germany, for example, wants to double the previous maximum speed of its internet connections. It plans to offer home access at 200 megabits per second from November using the network of Kabel Deutschland, a cable company it bought last year.

This is accelerating the trend that movies and music are being played less and less on physical media or from downloads, and are instead being streamed online.

Online music services such as Spotify, Google Music, Beatz, Deezer and Wimp are expanding their cooperation with OEMs. Following its agreement with Samsung, streaming provider Spotify announced at the IFA it would also be working with Bose and Panasonic.

Playing music on a smartphone is nothing new. But Spotify's head of global business development, Jorge Espinel, said phone apps could soon be used to choose music that would follow the user around, playing on the nearest device in his or her home.

Who's controlling whom?

This would work by having all these devices connect directly to the music service, from smartphones to home theater. An app would arrange the seamless handover of music from one device to another. Videos could be passed from room to room in the same way. Content would be retrieved from the Internet, with the smartphone serving as the control center, choosing the nearest TV or tablet.

The mobile phone is increasingly becoming a remote control in every area of life. But this also means that your smartphone already knows more about you and the things you like than you might want.

The issue of data protection is therefore also a hot topic at the IFA - even if it's overshadowed by the flashy gadgets.