This has never really been my impression of Internet of Things. The examples you've mentioned seem far too obvious and simplistic. To me, it's far more than scrambling to find the nth device to make smartphone-connected.

I've always looked at IoT as a mesh network of many specialized devices talking to each other to provide an overall context. For instance, speaking from my background: imagine a location sensor on a patient's wrist detecting an iBeacon in a particular ICU room indicating the patient has been upgraded, then triggering their vitals sensors to set to continuous monitoring, then upgrading the alert level for the patient's notifications in a physician's EMR, so on and so forth. In other words, these "Things" act more as specialized sensors, like our ears and eyes, that relay signals onto a digital thalamus/cerebrum where signals are integrated, a context is created, and actions are then taken.

I may be totally off-base here, and perhaps this isn't what Internet of Things is really about. But I hope it is.