Buyers of Internet of Things (IoT) solutions in very diverse markets often share similar profiles. Also, they plan large upswings in the number of connections they will deploy in each project. These are two of the many key findings of a huge quantitative survey undertaken to understand technology buying patterns for the IoT and Machine-to-Machine Communications (M2M) commissioned by the trade association the International M2M Council. Over 5,000 OEMs and enterprise users that deploy connected devices took part in it.
A press release by IMC quoted its Executive Director Keith Kreisher as saying, “This is a pure distillation of IoT buyers – we call them our IMC Adopter Members. The study was designed to screen out responses from companies that sell IoT solutions.
Conducted by analyst firm Beecham Research, the study drew data from IMC members in six vertical markets (energy, logistics, healthcare, retail, building & construction, and smart cities), with 32 percent reporting from Europe, 24 percent from North America, and 15 percent from Asia. A report on the study is available on the IMC Website.
Portending well for IoT growth, the buyers polled expected over 14 percent of their IoT deployments to incorporate more than 250,000 connected devices in three years’ time, which the researchers labelled as “a huge increase”. The study showed that less than 20 percent of the IoT projects currently underway involved the deployment of more than 10,000 connected devices, but buyers expected that to increase to 53 percent in three years.
”The study also shows strong movement away from using IoT/M2M technology to simply reduce costs, and towards using these solutions to meet customer requirements and build new revenue streams,” said Kreisher.
Fully, 49 percent of respondents self-identified as operations, with sales/marketing a distant second at 20 percent, followed by product design/development, and then IT. “The uniformity between disparate vertical markets was a true revelation,” felt Kreisher. “The only market where operations didn’t dominate was retail, but you could say that sales are essentially operations in a retail environment.”
The London-based IMC is the fastest-growing trade group dedicated to the global IoT/M2M sector, and has over 5,100 members. Board Member-Companies include Aeris, Amdocs, AT&T, B&B Electronics, Deutsche Telekom, Digi International, Inmarsat, Iridium, Kore, Numerex, Orbcomm, Nighthawk Control, Synapse Wireless, Telecom Italia, to name a few.
You may also want to read: CeBIT Hanover joins hands with International M2M Council
Image Credit: IMC
– Advertising Message –