Internet of Things (IoT) has been a transformational experience and a revolution for the global population. IoT has steamrolled into billions of lives of the populace, and is not looking to slow down in the coming years, with only a portion of the living individual (albeit, a major portion) affected by the use of IoT rather than every single region and individual of the world. IoT itself has gone through a number of transformations and innovations throughout its short lifespan till now. Some of the major innovations and trends that have been experienced by the world in 2018 and some of the major innovations and trends anticipated for 2019 have been scrutinized below:
2018
- Growth of IoT in healthcare, industrial and retail – One of the major trends observed throughout the year of 2018 was the significant adoption of IoT and its accompanying benefits in the healthcare, industrial and retail segments. The significant prevalence and boom of IoT has meant that most of the major segments have resulted in its adoption. But what has been the major surprise is the significant growth experienced in the aforementioned segments. The benefits and ease of operations experienced and associated with the usage of IoT has been one of the major factors behind this adoption. IoT has been adopted in the form of wearable devices, automation of factories and transparency in the supply chain of goods.
- Mobile interoperability – Mobile interoperability in simple terms is handling of operations of the automated equipment and devices connected through the internet. It simply translates to overlooking the status, efficiency, effectiveness of the devices connected to that mobile device that does not need to be physically attached to these equipments. In factory automation, majority of the equipment and devices are working based on the tasks and commands provided through this mobile interaction rather than the physical interactions of the individual. This requires the need for overlooking the entire operational cycle through a mobile connected device. This trend was in significant demand due to the growth associated with adoption of IoT in industries (i.e. Industry 4.0), along with the advent of “Smart Homes”.
- Edge computing – Edge computing is a physical infrastructural interface between the cloud storage and the user trying to access the data. Edge computing was created to solve the problem of lagging and inability to access the data by the users from the cloud due to its size and the isolated nature of the cloud from the user. Edge computing is a physical storage and interface infrastructure that keeps some amount of the data in these storage infrastructures, which helps in providing faster and easily accessible services to the user. More importantly, these infrastructures are present in more close proximity to the user thereby helping the user in access. This trend has overseen significant demand and applications due to the significant amounts of data generated since the advent and prevalence of IoT globally.
- Collection of data – Major marketing and sales organizations have adopted the usage of IoT in determining which avenues to target, determining the preferences of the individual, along with the behavior of the consumers in trend presently. IoT’s data collection can be defined as the collection of data conducted from the searches done over the internet, activities partaken over the social networks, online shopping habits and repeatability of some materials in the preferences of individual over others. This generation of data helps in determining the individual preferences of the consumers and the current consumer trend over a particular region.
- Analytics – With the amount of data generated from the adoption of IoT, there has been a need for making sense of the significant amount of data generated. This has resulted in the adoption of analytics, which help in identifying the type of data that has been created along with identifying the next course of action, such as categorizing it into useful; using it for further marketing purposes; storing the data. Data analytics covers the categorization of the types of data sets generated, whether they are useful enough to act upon or stored, disposing the unacceptable data sets.
2019
- Artificial intelligence - Prevalence of AI (artificial intelligence) in IoT has been in demand and is expected to be one of the major trends of the coming year. Incorporation of artificial intelligence in IoT can be simplified into the transformation of devices and equipments to be self-sufficient, helping the devices understand simple tasks being given to them through a mobile device, incorporation of machine learning and analyzing the data generated, resulting in actions caused by the particular data sets. The major applications of AI in IoT can be found in smart homes, smart mirrors, factory automation, autonomous vehicles and in electronic devices & appliances.
- Innovations in hardware and software – Increasing levels of adoption and demand of IoT in major applications for end-users have called for increased innovations in the quality of experience for users and performance of devices. This has resulted in improved performance of the sensors attached to and used for in operations of various devices and equipments. One of the major demands of the consumers has been the increased levels of performance of devices based on their processing speed and capabilities to process the command sets and data sets without any excessive power consumption. This is expected to conclude into high focus on innovations in the entirety of hardware and software of these devices and equipments, making them more complete and capable of working in collaboration with each other more efficiently and effectively. For example – major applications for mmWave sensors; silicon-based chipsets and processors.
- 5G-based technology – 5G is another innovation of technology that is expected to be in major demand caused by the major telecommunications companies not wanting to be the last in the race for innovations and launch of higher bandwidth and cellular technology. Although, launch of 5G and its accompanying technology should be treated with caution as no significant contribution or innovations have been seen presented by the major communications organizations. Even though, the concept of 5G has been presented in various conferences and organizational previews suggesting never-before seen bandwidth, significant data speeds, supporting the 600-MHz spectrums; all of these features at a significantly low cost, a large coverage area, and specific applications for IoT deployment.
- Customer-oriented provisions – Collection of significant data sets and analysis of these particular data sets have resulted in enhanced customer experience and individual behavior based services and goods in the market. For example – whenever we use artificial intelligence in our electronic devices or appliances for some specific searches or some preference oriented tasks, we are registering our specific behaviors or preferences in the database. This specific data helps in providing major organizations with the database to focus their efforts on and subsequently providing specific provision of goods and services based on the consumers’ needs.
- Secured infrastructure – One of the major threats of IoT and interconnectivity of devices has been the threat of user’s data being stolen. With the immense amount of data sets being generated and stored to serve the needs of the consumers, there have been instances of these data sets being hacked into and stolen. This has resulted in a significant demand of a more secure infrastructure with increased focus on the privacy of the user, causing the need for a more complex data structure and highly strengthened and secure infrastructure.
