IoT Trends For 2019

The state of the Internet of Things (IoT) market has not quite seen the explosion it did in 2017, rather it seems as though the hype has calmed as vendors prepare to bring a real impact in 2019.

As more and more vendors are striving to make viable IoT products and services which are easier to deploy, new developments like 5G and smart cities will bring with them added complexity to contend with.

Of course, it goes without saying that Gartner still holds onto its prediction that there will be over 20 billion IoT devices by 2020, but as we get closer to that date, consumers remain concerned about the performance and security of IoT deployments.

Here, we examine some of the major trends shaping IoT today, and what to expect in 2019.

Adoption
The IoT market is very likely to continue its upward trajectory in the market, especially with the height of focus from major vendors over the past year.

While 2018 demonstrated a year of increased IoT focus from vendors like Splunk and Google Cloud, we expect 2019 to bring more of the same.

Analyst firm Forrester predicts that B2B applications of IoT will take off immensely in the next year, whilst B2C will continue to find its footing. It predicts that 85 percent of firms will implement or plan to implement IoT solutions in 2019.

“B2B IoT will take a play from the mobile rollouts in 2000 that went beyond the buzz of what was possible, focusing on field assets, distributed management and remote control. In that same way, B2B IoT will focus on driving efficiencies, connecting the enterprise, expanding the edge and in some cases, providing personalised customer experiences,” it said in a blog post.

Adoption is particularly expected to surge across the manufacturing, healthcare, retail and utilities industries.

Industrial IoT
According to IndustryARC, the Industrial IoT (IIoT) market is expected to reach over $123 billion by 2021.

As the race to deliver becomes heated amongst vendors, more industrial and manufacturing firms are expected to adopt IoT in 2019 than ever before.

“The potential of IoT within industrial sectors will be high, but this new world still isn’t properly understood. The big institutions have not seen the benefits as they already believe they have solutions which are sound,” Jamie Bennett, VP of engineering IoT and devices at Canonical said.

“IoT within connected cars, smart building and in farming will accelerate as the ROI is more clear-cut,” he added.

A report from Statista shows that manufacturing, transportation, logistics and utilities industries are expected to spend $40 billion each on IoT platforms and services by 2020.

Already, this year saw a number of logistics and delivery vendor’s start to reap the benefits of IoT, but as connectivity becomes of even greater importance we should expect to see even more connected solutions in 2019.

In fact, research from GE Digital found that 22 percent of organisations believe an IIoT-ready industry platform is the most important technology to invest in.

Emerging IoT projects
During the early years of IoT, it was difficult to identify exactly what the technology would be used for other than the theory of ‘connected things,’ but that is no longer the case.

2018 was a year of numerous emerging projects. According to research by IoT Analytics, smart city topped the list of the most common IoT projects, with 45 percent of smart city projects in Europe alone. Connected devices and industrial applications followed closely behind.

In 2019, smart city applications and infrastructure projects are expected to see exceptional growth.

“As we enter 2019 the number of connected devices will only increase as more organisations begin to realise the benefits of IoT technologies. Consequently, next year will see the birth of a smarter IoT – whereby fully connected businesses will begin to pull data for more predictive use,” Martin Hodgson, head of UK and Ireland at Paessler told Computerworld UK.

Although the consumer market has been predicted to remain in the early stages, the smart home and connected devices markets should continue to grow to meet customer demand.

According to software firm Arm, 2019 is expected to see a growth in the availability of IoT smart home products as the expansion of consumer products will surpass the usual mainstream lighting, heating, cooling and other smart home devices areas, and instead deliver increased automation and efficiency to everyday tasks.

Security remains a concern
Despite this, IoT security will remain a huge concern. The past year saw a rise in IoT security appearing in headlines, all for the wrong reasons. – Computer World UK