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The Internet of Things (IoT) is an area of the tech market that while expanding is very hard to quantify. It covers such a wide range of solutions and products across a huge number of industries and is growing — or spreading — in a trend that is likely to accelerate in the future.
That said, there are some issues that should be addressed before this budding market reaches maturity if it is to reach its full potential and deliver true benefit to consumers rather than simply to data collection tool.
How big is the IoT market?
If you look back even a couple of years, research from IDC suggested that “the number of devices connected to the internet, including the machines, sensors, and cameras that make up the IoT, would be hit 41.6 billion devices, or "things," generating 79.4 zettabytes (ZB) of data in 2025”. The World Economic Forum agrees with these predictions and estimates that there will be 41 billion devices capturing data on how we live, work, move through cities, and interact with the machines on which we depend.
However, not every researcher believes that the numbers reach these levels so quickly due to consumer concerns and perceived value add, with other estimates put the number closer to 30 billion by 2025 and a total of 50 billion but taking a lot longer to reach this target.
So, what could stall the expansion of IoT?
This is the question that all enterprise leaders who are looking to invest in the technology need to be asking themselves before making the commitment – so we have a few considerations that need to be addressed and overcome before the IoT can really reach its full potential:
Solution Maturity
As with most new technologies, at the start, the IoT offerings have been rather limited and the upfront investment cost was relatively high. This led to a lot of early adopters having a poor first experience, which is why a lot of IoT projects have either failed or fallen far short of the original vision for the product.
The world of IoT is very rapidly changing, so you need to keep in mind that while the market matures and each iteration is improved on, current technologies can quickly become obsolete.
Software Vulnerabilities
Many IoT-enabled devices currently run low-quality software that leaves them susceptible even to the kinds of vulnerabilities that were prevalent in the late 90s and early 2000s.
Not only are many devices themselves vulnerable – due to software exploits, weak cryptographic usage, authentication failures, and the difficulty in deploying software updates – but they can create weakened attack points within an otherwise secure network – exposing the entire network and the devices that reside on it.
This is to say nothing of devices that capture video or audio and send it to other parties without the user's knowledge (e.g., voice assistants building voice profiles of individuals or cameras providing data to law enforcement without direct, informed consent), which is a topic that also needs to be addressed from a moral standpoint.
Privacy
A key topic for tech companies at the moment. Although IoT devices undoubtedly have the potential to provide consumers with a fantastic experience, security issues have always been a contentious issue. With the amount of typically sensitive information being transmitted over the internet and the lack of security, a data breach of any magnitude can severely disrupt an individual's personal life or a business enterprise. However, currently due to the amount of information that is being transmitted and the simplicity of the systems, employing advanced encryption would dramatically affect both the complexity of the sensors and computational power needed.
Scalability
IoT systems are shifting the way we interact with the world and the model lends itself well to global scaling and public cloud development. However, to take full advantage of the native-cloud features and avoid high AWS/Azure bills and inefficiency, companies need to revamp their strategies and create updated Kubernetes based public cloud deployments, this tends to mean big additional investments before being able to roll out IoT tech effectively on a global scale.
Lack of Skills
Implementing IoT requires a breadth of experience that most companies simply don't have – While a standard sensor can store data locally or communicate it over some relatively simple standard protocol like Modbus, the data collected by an IoT sensor must traverse a considerable breadth of custom-developed systems.
To have a useful IoT product, a company then needs to collect, aggregate, and analyse the backend data and then be able to effectively present the data back to users in a meaningful and useful way, all of which requires a whole range of skillsets – from UX/UI, data science, back-end development, and not to mention cybersecurity.
This has the potential to be a dominant part of the future tech industry and for companies looking to get a head start, it is important that these issues are addressed early on and that the investment is made to develop the skills and knowledge within your teams to stay at the forefront of innovation and able to utilise this tech to add real value to the consumer.
If you are looking to expand your IoT deployment and need help finding market-leading talent with the skillsets required – Arrange a chat with our Recruitment Director.