IoT today is massive, robust and flexible

The IoT has overcome the barriers that inhibited its growth and emerged as a massive industry. Today it is characterised as a mature and interoperable technology, implemented on a large scale.

There is still a long way to go, but large-scale implementations are happening routinely and tens of billions of IoT connections are being added every year. This is being made possible by the confluence of available technology, the greater variety of connectivity options, especially in the mobile phone market, and the greater maturity of IoT security, certification, compliance and business models.

Large-scale IoT has also benefited from the flywheel effect of successful deployments, fostering greater confidence in the landscape and, in turn, supporting more investment.

The IoT Analytics company reports that global IoT connections reached 16 billion active terminals in 2023. It estimates that there will be more than 29 billion active IoT terminals by 2027. The size of the enterprise IoT market reached US$269 billion in 2023, representing growth of 15 per cent on the previous year, according to the Global IoT Enterprise Spending dashboard (Q2 2024 update). As always, these figures should be considered with caution and definitions are important.

The size of the cellular IoT market has also caught the attention of analysts. Mobile operators worldwide stand to earn a total of $15 billion from 3.6 billion cellular IoT connections in 2023, according to IoT Analytics’ Global Cellular IoT Connectivity Tracker & Forecast (updated June 2024) and the IoT Mobile Operator Pricing & Market Report 2024-2030 (released July 2024 ).

Mobile operators’ IoT revenue growth rate of 23 per cent year-on-year surpassed that of IoT software companies and hyperscalers in 2023. The top five mobile IoT network operators managed 83 per cent of all global cellular IoT connections, while the top five by revenue received 64 per cent of combined revenue.

Omdia, for its part, predicts that there will be 5.4 billion cellular IoT connections by 2030. It sees 5G-related technologies, such as 5G Red Cap and 5G Massive IoT, driving much of this growth.

The advanced cellular technologies now available broaden the options and mean that organisations can select the most suitable connectivity for their use case than ever before. This is an important factor for mass-market IoT, as it means there is less waste and organisations can readily make the trade-offs between cost, performance, security and power consumption for cellular connectivity and select the option that best suits their deployment. This removes complexity from the IoT design and development phase and provides greater visibility of the whole-life costs of a deployment. This clarity helps with financing and increases confidence in the return on investment.

Security is still a priority

With connectivity options finally becoming clearer and simple propositions now widely offered, organisations are focusing on other essential features. Security is an obvious concern, as the more connected devices that make up a deployment, the greater the threat surface and the greater the risk.

Security by design incorporates secure functions into devices before implementation and offers better security than customised solutions, which are often too expensive or impractical for many IoT use cases. It’s important not only because of the obvious need to prevent hacks and fraud, but also to guarantee the identity of the connected device and inextricably link the data to the device that collected and transmitted it. Trust in reliable IoT data is an essential part of the IoT value proposition, and this is now well understood with the implementation of effective solutions.

Certification and regulatory compliance still represent a significant bottleneck, but organisations are increasingly relying on suppliers to take advantage of their expertise and make the process easier. There is a growing realisation that much of this process can be replicated from one device to another and that it is not necessary for every company involved in IoT to become a certification specialist.

IoT organisations need access to economies of scale to justify business cases and this means they need to speed up and simplify certification, which is required in national, regional and vertical markets for devices to be deployed.

Partnerships on the rise

Before, organisations focused on trying to do everything themselves, but now they realise that this is too slow, too expensive and too complicated. Instead, there is a greater appetite for partnering with experts, from device design to deployment and beyond. By turning to IoT-as-a-Service providers, organisations can access optimised solutions for device development and certification, manufacturing, connectivity, implementation, support and security.

There is also a greater willingness to share the risk and reward. Turning to partners who can handle IoT on a large scale and who have in-depth knowledge of the complexities of IoT, such as energy consumption, cellular network variants or security, can radically speed up time to market, result in significantly better performance and deliver transformed business value.

The greater the volumes, the greater the risk, but also the greater the reward – this is the attitude that IoT innovators entering the era of mass IoT at hyperscale are adopting. It’s an exciting scenario and participants will reach success more quickly if they join forces.