People depend on smart, networked gadgets and sensors to make their lives simpler, more productive, and more efficient, regardless of whether they are at home, at the workplace, or travelling around the city.
Nowadays, technological advancements like as low-power processors, improved connectivity, and superior artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are enabling the development of new Internet of Things (IoT) application cases. Applications in the fields of healthcare, industry, and transportation are on the rise.
McKinsey predicts that IoT goods and services would generate between $5.5 and $12.6 trillion in value by 2030. Yet, IoT solutions have difficulties. They range from designing sensing devices with secure cloud access to providing user-specific insights.
The lack of semiconductors and supply-chain problems resulting from the coronavirus epidemic continue to affect suppliers and manufacturers. Many ecosystems, IP, technologies, and standards have fragmented and clumsified the modern world of connected gadgets. Yet creation of simple, secure products remains a challenge.
To maximize the future potential of IoT, industry leaders must agree on standards to unify device manufacturers and makers. Whether they are partners or rivals, IoT product, software, hardware, and chip manufacturers will need to collaborate to build new features, products, and innovations and get them to market more quickly.
Accelerators of IoT development
Industrial, commercial, and consumer demands drive IoT innovation: while technical advancements enable new use cases, some important industries are driving the expansion of connected devices. According to McKinsey, factories and human health will account for 36 to 40 percent of the expected untapped value by 2030.
Developments in the Internet of Things’s four enabling technologies—chips, connectivity, security, and artificial intelligence—are lowering prices and improving gadgets.
Connected devices will progressively enter major areas, including as consumer appliances, automobiles and transportation, manufacturing and industry, and human health, as a result of the development of more compact, energy-efficient CPUs and wireless components. Enhanced networks result in more dependable connectivity, hence enabling previously impossible applications.
When the usefulness of networked devices becomes more apparent, demand increases. Rob Conant, vice president of software ecosystems at Infineon, a provider of semiconductor and software solutions for IoT enterprises, recounts the proliferation of IoT applications from fleet monitoring in the 1980s through industrial production and the smart grid in the 1990s and 2000s. He anticipates the expansion to continue across other industries:
“Connectivity is being integrated into an increasing number of applications, including pool pumps, light bulbs, and even furniture,” he explains. “As a result of the value propositions they can provide with the IoT, businesses that were not historically tech firms are transforming into tech companies. There is a tremendous change in those firms.”