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The enterprise is beginning to eclipse the consumer space for investment in IoT startups, according to the latest research from Verizon.
In the company’s latest State of the Market report, which collates usage data, interviews with Verizon customers and research from Oxford Economics, the telco argues enterprise IoT investment outstripped the consumer side by 75% in 2015; a major difference when compared to the previous year. The report also asserts that IoT will ease regulatory and compliance concerns for both medium and large enterprises.
The comparison between 2015 and 2016 in terms of how the IoT has progressed is stark, according to the researchers. Whereas 2015 was the year the Internet of Things gained ‘legitimacy’, the landscape today sees greater investments, building into future strategies and models, and gradually becoming mainstream.
“We’ll continue to see a tremendous amount of innovation in smartwatches and other IoT solutions for the consumer, especially as technologies for the individual, the car and the home become untethered from the phone and increasingly converge with other things around them,” the report notes.
Yet it is the enterprise which has the potential to cause the biggest ripple, with large organisations viewing the IoT as a potential new revenue stream through data monetisation, low power devices, platform as a service, and investment in IoT startups. Data monetisation was cited as the biggest of these growth drivers, yet less than one in 10 (8%) businesses polled utilise more than a quarter of their IoT data – an opportunity Verizon calls the Analytics of Things (AoT).
The report also examines consumer expectations towards the IoT – and in particular understanding that with so much potential at their fingertips, expectations are high. Consumer beliefs are put into three areas; those who live their lives predominantly through mobile, those whose network of ‘things’ they care about continue to expand, and those who are ‘addicted to improvement’, or crave frequent updates on the people and things they care about.
Interested in hearing industry leaders discuss subjects like this and sharing their IoT use-cases? Attend the IoT Tech Expo World Series events with upcoming shows in Silicon Valley, London and Amsterdam to learn more.
The show is co-located with the AI & Big Data Expo, Cyber Security & Cloud Expo and Blockchain Expo so you can explore the entire ecosystem in one place.
