Consumers obviously see enough value in remote control for it to be added as a feature, I'm not sure putting the cat in the bag is a great solution at this point

That said while I do disagree with the above consumers, I don't care about remote control but I would quite like remote status updates from various appliances (is the door locked, is the washing cycle finished, has the fridge been left open, etc.)

Do they? All our Internet-connectible kitchen junk has some fine print in the manual about how the appliance will spy on you to improve ad targeting.

I suspect the only value most consumers see in these features is lower retail pricing.