Eseye recently released its State of IoT Adoption Report for 2024, with a key finding being that a mere 0.4% of companies operating in the IoT space are only achieving connectivity levels of more than 98%. To understand more, IoT Insider spoke to Anand Gandhi, SVP Worldwide Sales at Eseye at IoT Tech Expo Europe, in Amsterdam.
Key findings
The methodology involved over 1,200 companies, surveying leading decision makers across various industry verticals – including healthcare, manufacturing and EV charging, to name a few.
“The three key findings come down to connectivity issues, device issues and security concerns,” explained Gandhi. On the point about 0.4% of companies achieving 98% or more of connectivity, he added: “Knowing the technology, I understand why this happens. But no business case has ever been predicated on less than 100% connectivity.”
For industry verticals like healthcare, which are depending on connectivity for the remote monitoring of patients, for example, the significance of having dependable connectivity becomes clear.
Gandhi explained that connectivity issues are inextricably linked to the performance of the device – so designing the device, optimising it, and validating it properly are crucial.
“People are saying 58% of project devices are attributed to device issues, which has been higher in previous years [reports] so it’s going in the right direction,” he said.
Challenges
Findings that were surprising for Eseye were the drop in the connectivity levels achieved by business – which was 1.49% of businesses, according to last year’s report – and feedback from respondents who said they understood the upcoming SGP.32 standards.
“There are many challenges in the deployment of the standard from an IoT perspective,” outlined Gandhi. “How do you set a global APN? How do you switch between API? What are the security concerns?
“In the coming months, before it’s released as a standard, we as an industry need to make sure that customers understand the challenges behind it.”
For the EV charging sector, a lot of challenges being navigated currently are to do with technical device challenges, while for logistics they’re concerned with security due to the tracking they perform on assets – reflecting that the challenges vary depending on the industry vertical.
“For smart vending companies, their uptime is attributable to vending. If a vending machine isn’t working [due to connectivity], it doesn’t generate money. 34% of those companies have said there’s an issue getting technical support, where things go wrong,” added Gandhi.
The US versus UK
The report highlighted disparities in IoT adoption between the UK and US, notably how the US is leading in adoption, which I took to mean pointed to the US’ dominance in technologies. Gandhi, however, had a different take.
Examining the statistics showed that the UK and US are “neck to neck” with small to midsize IoT estates, measured as 1001-5000 devices deployed, he explained. 37% of respondents in the UK and US reported having small to midsize estates. In the next bracket, the US reports 27% of 5001-10,000 devices deployed. In the US, 12% have 10,000-100,000 devices, which is 9% in the UK.
Gandhi also noted that based on the report results, “85% of US companies say they have growth plans in IoT coming up, which is 75% of UK companies. The UK is catching up.”
This illustrated the importance of getting the connectivity right depending on the use case and getting the device right, Gandhi said.
Actionable insights
“People need solutions that are tailored to their use cases,” stressed Gandhi. “We believe, working from a device perspective, that making sure the device is set for receiving the data and connecting it around the world so they can deploy it is key.”
“IoT is accelerating,” he continued. “It’s growing in all the sectors we see, adoption is growing, and we’re seeing that in the conversations we have … new customers are coming in with good use cases, but we have to address the key concerns, the connectivity, the device and the security.”
Having these nailed down will support adoption, growth and, ultimately, address the 0.4% figure cited from Eseye’s report, with the hope that businesses will manage more consistent connectivity.
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