State of the Market: The Internet of Things 2016

Verizon (www.verizonwireless.com) is the largest wireless telecommunications provider in the United States and, joined by the research and advisory firms; Gartner, IDC and PwC, has released their annual report demonstrating how Internet of Things (IoT) is addressing society’s most pressing social and economic challenges both by businesses and the public sector.  The report explains how five macro trends in combination are speeding IoT adoption and delivering tangible results across a variety of sectors.

Verizon stated that IoT gained legitimacy in 2015, moving from being ‘just a project’ to becoming a ‘mainstream’ directive within businesses.  IoT is being built into future strategies and business models with companies from many industries focussing on adoption.  Worldwide, the amount being spent in the internet of things market will grow from $591.7 billion in 2014 up to $1.3 trillion in 2019.  The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) is 17% with endpoints growing from 9.7 billion in 2014 to over 25.6 billion in 2019 and surpassing 30 billion in 2020.

Some insightful information presented includes:

• Revenue growth is the biggest factor driving IoT.
• Only 8% of businesses are using more than 25% of their total IoT data.
• 5G promises to deliver on IoT opportunities like robotics and autonomous vehicles.
• In 2016, enterprise IoT startups will generate two to three times more funding than their consumer counterparts.
• IoT is not a single, monolithic market but is instead composed of tens of thousands of small markets.
• IoT platforms enable people living a problem to construct solutions and bring them to market cost effectively.
• IoT provides opportunities to share information with customers, to improve the customer experience (75%), and to gain insight into customer preferences (74%).
• The addressable market of over 300 million electric, water and gas meters in service in the United States shows that the utilities market is enormous.