Don’t believe the hype and over optimistic predictions surrounding the IoT, says Beecham Research. Although some forecasts predict there could be 50billion connected devices by 2020, the consulting company believes these numbers to be ’unrealistic’ and ’potentially damaging’ to the industry.
“There is no doubt that the M2M and IoT markets are moving quickly and there are great new business opportunities,” said Robin Duke-Woolley, the company’s CEO. “But with unrealistic predictions around the growth of connected devices, there is also the risk that companies will run out of time and money before they see a return on their investment.”
Beecham’s contention is that, once you discount the number of phones and tablets in use, there is ‘significantly less’ than 1bn connected devices. “To suggest that growth rates exceeding 50% per annum are credible when the long term growth in this market has been consistently in the range 20 to 30% per annum prompts the question why,” Duke-Woolley continued, “and what is likely to accelerate the overall growth rate so spectacularly? There is no answer to that.”
Duke-Woolley is particularly critical of those predicting the market being worth trillions of dollars. “We need to get real here. The total GDP of the US is currently $18trillion annually. To suggest that new revenue from IoT will approach even 10% of this over a 5 to 10 year period is unrealistic and unhelpful.”
Author
Graham Pitcher
Source: www.newelectronics.co.uk