The year 2015, in particular, will go down in the history of Internet of Things (IoT) as:
- The year it was on top of Gartnerss Peak of Inflated Expectations;
- A year of transition for companies that have been working in M2M and IoT for years;
- The first of a short life for many start-ups that will disappear before the magic 2020;
- A lost year to create IoT Standards;
- And as the year that the tech giants began to take seriously IoT.
Good Bye 2015
Looking back on this past year we have seen:
- A declared war for the dominion of a low-power, wide-area network (LPWAN). LoRA, SigFox, other technologies and standards (LTE-M) are looking for a piece of this cake.
- Tech giants like AWS, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco or Salesforce announced their plans for Cloud IoT platforms and Services.
- The new trend Edge Computing and Intelligent Gateways.
- The evolving role of big data analytics in the insight economy and how Small Data Is Driving The Internet Of Things.
- Great examples of IoT Ecosystem Innovation, Diversity and Collaboration- ARM ecosystem with Freescale Semiconductor and InvenSense, Industrial Internet Consortium promoting Test Beds.
- Record $14.8bn spent on IoT acquisitions in 2015:
- Semiconductor-related acquisitions have driven the bulk of spending so far in 2015, with ARM, Intel and NXP each announcing two or more deals largely driven by IoT-related position taking. Dialog Semiconductor acquired Atmel for $4.6B in September. In May, semiconductor company Avago Technologies acquired rival Broadcom in a $37 billion deal.
- Tech giants acquiring young IoT platform companies; Alcatel-Lucent acquired Mformation in September, Amazon acquired 2lemetry in March and Autodesk acquired SeeControl in August.
- On November 3, Cisco completed the acquisition of ParStream.
- PTC has acquired Vuforia from Qualcomm for $65 million in November, with plans to increase its focus in the IoT and B2B (business to business) world.
- Advantech Acquired B+B SmartWorx for US$99.85 Million, Targeting Industrial IoT Applications and Expansion in the Industrial Connectivity Market in November.
- The emergence of many IoT start-ups funded by the public through crowdfunding sites and by private investors, an indication of the expectations that IoT is creating.
- And a lot of IoT/M2M/wearables events and IoT headlines in post and articles
What Can We Expect of IoT in 2016?
For three years, I have been collecting IoT predictions from many analysts and companies in this document IoT / M2M predictions 2016-2015-2014 Different sources.
I am sure if you are involved in one or other way in this market you are asking yourself many questions. Where will be the focus in 2016? Which companies will be acquired, which will disappear? Will we see new use cases and new profitable business models? Will security remain the main concern? Will we get standards? And the big question, will the number of companies increase that will make technology compromises and finally invest in projects and not in pilots or will they wait for a year or two until it becomes clear which of the many technology choices will be the winner?
As you can imagine, I have no crystal ball neither am I a fortune teller but I like to read the predictions of my colleagues and friends and I like doing my own bets, so here I go with a short summary of what we will or may not see in 2016:
- Companies to follow in 2016. In this post the author points out the top 10 companies that are working on products that will cater to the demands of the shifting market and are set to revolutionize the lives of the people using those products in 2016.
- For Gartner the IoT industry will explode in 2016 The Company predicts 6.4 billion devices will be connected to the internet and 5.5 million new things will join them each day.
- IDC expect to see a few IoT leaders emerge that provide scalable, secure, and robust solutions that will garner share during 2016.
- For Machina Research, 2016 is set to be a critical year for defining the future of LPWA networks and IoT connectivity.
- Forrester research believes that the hype surrounding the Internet of Things (IoT) will continue in 2016. We have to wait some days to listen to a paid webinar for 13 of the most significant changes and what CIOs should do about them.
- Jasper considers that 2016 will be the year where the industry stops paying attention to just the number of devices connected, and instead starts tracking the variety of new services enabled by those connected devices.
- One out of five Flexera Software predictions is that IoT hacking will make more headlines, increasing pressure on device makers to focus on security and remediation.
- Older more established companies could not be overlooked though as they have also allocated millions of dollars in R&D of new wearable devices, gadgets, applications, and Internet of Things systems set to shake the market in 2016. Will investors think that the right time to buy Internet of Things stocks is today. But where should they put their money?
- Qualcomm Inc. vs. Intel Corporation: Which Will Win in the Internet of Things?
- Rethinking the Business Model and Value Chain. Clearly security will become the prized possession and those who can provide security will attract attention and money at an astronomical rate. We will see some companies offering hacking as a service).
- Industrial Internet IoT outlook 2016
- 5 Predictions for the Internet of Things
- https://intland.com/blog/agile/internet-of-things-iot-growth-forecast-for-2016/
And in The Horizon of 2020 or is 2025?
Since 2009, the industry has hung its hat on Ericssons prediction of 50 billion connected devices by 2020. This year, however Ericsson has indicated that we may only see a little half of the number. In its latest Ericsson Mobility Report it said Our forecast points to there being 26 billion connected devices by 2020. The company said that its previous number was a vision and not a prediction. A complete shock, isnt it.
I am confident that Ericsson will not be the last company, which as we approaching the year 2020, will modify their visions and will provide more accurate predictions and estimates or better, as Jasper predicts, I hope 2016 will be the year where the industry stops paying attention to just the number of devices connected, and instead starts tracking the variety of new services enabled by those connected devices.
Beecham Research is warning companies planning to get into the Internet of Things (IoT) market not to believe all the hype and overoptimistic predictions. By now, you should not panic. We must trust that there will be billions of smart devices, new profitable business models, successful IoT startups, transformation of industries, optimization of processes, more satisfied customers, driverless cars, less traffic jam, and it is also possible that the quality of our life will be better. But it will not be all in 2016 and perhaps neither in 2020. We just must have a little more patience and it will arrive.
We are many who are evangelizing into companies so they understand the risk wasting this significant opportunity and we will continue in 2016.
What are your expectations, wishes or requests for 2016?
Thanks everyone for your Likes, Comments and Shares.