Vodafone reports IoT is going A-OK

Vodafone has released its sixth annual Internet of Things Barometer report to give a temperature check on IoT progress, and its all looking pretty rosy.

Looking at adoption trends across various segments including automotive, healthcare and financial services, the team suggests the IoT world is creeping slowly towards mass market adoption. While this will certainly be encouraging for huge swathes of the telco world, as a telco which is arguably one of the leaders, Vodafone will be buoyed by such estimates.

“This is the age of digital transformation, and it’s a hugely exciting time for businesses looking to take those digital steps to success,” said Anne Sheehan, Director of Vodafone Business UK.

“IoT – alongside analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud – can deliver real business benefits ranging from improved safety to increased responsiveness to entirely new revenue streams. It represents a massive opportunity for businesses in the UK and globally.”

According to the research, 34% of respondents now use IoT as part of their operations, with 70% of these early adopters moving beyond the pilot stage. 95% of these companies are already seeing benefits of the programmes, while 74% believe IoT will be a major disruptor of their own industry over the next five years.

While the promise of IoT has been bubbling away in the background for some time, it did appear to be benefits for the privileged. This is of course far from mainstream adoption, but perhaps the emergence of more commoditised products, off-the-shelf, are starting to turn heads. The simpler companies make it to implement IoT the more success will be seen. This might seem like an obvious statement, but innovators often have a way of complicating matters because it seems simple to them.

“IoT is on the cusp of mass adoption but to make that jump into the mainstream, we need a fresh look at how these devices are implemented,” said Nick Ford, technology evangelist at Mendix.

“All too often, IoT devices are not set up to deliver the best results. Their implementation stops short of connecting them to purpose built applications that can unlock their true value. The good news is that most organisations don’t lack ideas here – employees and teams just don’t have the right support to bring their ideas to life.”

One of the issues which companies might be facing is a direct result of one of the benefits. 48% of the respondents note that improved data collection was a key benefit, however if you have no idea what to do with the data what’s the point. Considering the processing and action of data is the grand vision of the connected economy, this might be one of the areas which scares those controlling the purse strings.

IoT is on the rise, with Vodafone leading the charge. There might be some validation of this 5G thing after all.