On my previous post I spoke about the top 5 insights for IoT, what IoT is and isn’t http://bit.ly/2J1AOIt. On this post I am aiming to highlight the key industries IoT has and is disrupting.
Enterprises and organisations of all types and sizes have embraced the Internet of things and deploying various solutions to help them capture part of the IoT hyped market share. Digital transformation and innovation is driven by the large appetite for IoT, AI and other digital implementations. According to the experts at Gartner this will continue for at least the next decade.
Digital transformation is the favourite and most overused term when talking about technological evolution. Unless you have been leaving in far far away place where the internet hasn't reached or consciously have been trying to stay off the grid, you have asked Alexa, Siri and the rest of their pals for assistance of some sort. Voice assistants are a very small way IoT has already been embedded in our homes and daily lives.
To look at this more broadly, according to IDC, IoT is to reach $745 Billion in 2019 led mainly by the following industries http://bit.ly/2VgFsIY:
Automotive - Smart car technologies
Consumer Electronics - this includes wearables, Voice Assistants, Home sensors, Doorbell security, etc
Utilities - this includes Telecoms. Telecom Enterprises play a large and pivotal role on the IoT connectivity and adoption
Manufacturing
Smart Cities
Let’s dive a bit deeper on the key industries which I personally believe have and will continue to have significant growth impact on IoT solution implementation.
Healthcare: Healthcare is already seeing benefits from IoT. Outside the multitude of wearables giving us insights on our physical and even mental health. Healthcare has seen improvements on streamlined and more interconnected processes. Data being accessible across multiple platforms providing healthcare professionals with the information they need to asset the patients health more efficiently. It helps of course that broadband connectivity speeds are so much better now and this allows doctors to converse and even perform operation remotely.
Retail: Retail has been affected a lot if not the most by IoT implementations. This goes beyond inventory management. Most retails chains are gathering more information about customer interactions, products and purchase behaviour. E-commerce has been taking over for quite sometime, the ease of access and our insatiable appetite for immediate access is driving innovation in new areas based on the data gathered. We have moved into an era of personalised on demand commerce and IoT is enabling data driven product innovation faster that even before.
Transport: Sensor enabled IoT in vehicles to monitor location, speed, driver behaviour and vehicle health have been around for a while. It allows car manufactures to move into predictive maintenance and provided tailor made services. Insurance companies are able to provide driver specific pricing plans by monitoring the driver behaviour. Cities and High Way (motorway) authorities to have more accurate real time traffic data and redirect traffic to ease congestion.
Agriculture: The farming of the future is a connected one. Connected farmers with real time data on soil condition and weather and irrigation information can plan their crops more efficiently for higher yield. At the same time real time alerts aid understanding on plant behaviour and allowed farmers to plan and plant the more appropriate crops for the best possible results.
Smart Cities/Smart Citizen: Alexa playing your favourite music, helping you automatically order your favourite items, controlling your home lights and your home climate control, is only the beginning. The homes of the future are connected, efficient and green. Within the City environment, monitoring traffic, bus schedules, parking and lights, waste management and crime management are some of the main features IoT is enabling city councils achieve. Weather and pollution monitoring has gone beyond the traditional streaming and call centre solutions. All these are made possible with IoT sensors.
We only scratched the surface above with what IoT can enable the various industries to achieve. Our world is more connected and more data driven than even before. One of the key challenges to ensure that all the available data is utilised efficiently is interoperability.
To fully harness the power of the IoT solutions, those solutions need to be open and easy to integrate. We do have a long way to go till we reach that space and have a total eclipse of silos. The move towards a global data exchange is on the way. Open conversations and access for all the users on the value chain is coming.
Until next time...
Author: Nassia Skoulikariti
Founder & CEO of Apiro Data