Vodafone research reveals number of large scale IoT projects doubled last year

New York, Sept 27, 2017: Vodafone today published its fifth annual IoT Barometer Report – a global survey of business sentiment regarding investment and innovation in the Internet of Things (IoT).

The Barometer report found that:

  • The percentage of companies with more than 50,000 connected devices active doubled in the last 12 months
  • 84 per cent of IoT adopters said their use of IoT had grown in the last year
  • 51 per cent of IoT adopters said that the technology was increasing revenues or opening up new revenue streams
  • 66 per cent of all companies agreed that digital transformation was impossible without IoT

The report found businesses in the Americas led the way in embracing large scale IoT projects, where 19 per cent of companies using IoT had more than 10,000 connected devices, compared to 13 per cent in Europe and 7 per cent in Asia Pacific. The large scale users also reported some of the biggest business gains with 67 per cent of them highlighting significant returns from the use of IoT. Energy and utility companies were at the forefront of the largest IoT projects worldwide, with applications such as smart meters and pipeline monitoring.

The range of benefits that users are getting from IoT is also widening as adoption increases – greater business insights, reduced costs and improved employee productivity top the list globally. In Asia Pacific 53 per cent of respondents cited increased market competitiveness as the top benefit compared to 35 per cent in the Americas and 33 per cent in Europe. In the automotive sector, 51 per cent of companies said that IoT was helping to improve brand differentiation.

Security in IoT is still the biggest barrier for organizations regarding deployment. However, in companies with 10,000 or more connected devices in operation only 7 per cent said security was their top worry. Organisations were taking more steps to tackle security concerns including an increase in security training for existing staff, working with specialist security providers and recruiting more IT security specialists.

As the scale of IoT projects increases the report also notes a rise in connectivity requirements.

Vodafone Director of IoT Erik Brenneis said, “Over the five years of this report we have seen the number of companies that have adopted IoT double, and projects have grown from small pilots to global rollouts of tens of thousands of connected devices. IoT is clearly here to stay and the future looks exciting as 79 per cent of adopters are saying that IoT will have an enormous impact on the whole economy in the next five years. I believe we can now say that IoT has come of age and is proving itself across all industries and geographies.”

The IoT Barometer research surveyed 1,278 respondents in 13 countries, US, Brazil, Ireland, UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, South Africa, China, India, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

Image Credit: Vodafone
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