The end of February brings the annual technology pilgrimage to Barcelona for Mobile World Congress, where telecommunications, media and content providers come together to highlight the latest and greatest technology and services.
As the industry gets closer to the realities of 5G, there is one topic we can all expect to see pervasively across the 8 halls; the Internet of Everything. IoE/IoT related services and devices that leverage Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) technologies are expected to be front and center in Barcelona, highlighting the benefits of increased end point connectivity across a variety of industries, including expanded uses in smart cities, home security and automation, and connected vehicles.
Netcracker recently conducted a survey of more than 1,500 U.S. consumers to gain insight into personal assistant device users and the role these devices play in the connecting world we all live in. Data showed that 37.5% of respondents who used a personal assistant like Amazon Echo, also had a wearable device, says Paul Hughes, director of Strategy for Netcracker Technology.
Keep in mind that wearables owners make up nearly a quarter of all smart phone users. 21% of those people already own personal assistant devices. Furthermore, nearly 34% of personal assistant owners also own web-connected cameras and 26% own connected cars or connected car devices.
Survey data also showed that that 26% of smart thermostat owners, 24% of web-based camera owners and 18% of connected car owners have purchased a personal assistant. This suggests that the emerging personal assistant wave may represent an IoT inflection point.
A customer’s purchase of a personal assistant likely signals rapid, subsequent purchases of a variety of IoT devices. Service providers will not only want to sell these devices and connect them, but also to sell and facilitate upgrades through multiple generations of each device a customer owns.
IoE may bring the excitement of new technologies and business models to the forefront, but it also highlights the growing impacts of less sexy topics like data gathering, usage, management and analytics. Over the next few years, the telecommunications industry will need new, innovative approaches to data management storage, data ownership, data sharing, data lakes, and open data — all of which will have a direct impact on every player in the IoT ecosystem.
CSP, enterprises and applications will all gather data from IoT devices, analysing it at the right point in the network and helping businesses or end users make the appropriate based on the expected or demanded outcome. This is an important reminder about why IoE/ IoT is important….it is about the business transformations that happen when businesses can better understand their processes using analysed data from those things.
As we embrace IoT from a talking gadget wireless sensor and ultimately a new business perspective, we must not overlook the analytical requirements that organisations must embrace. Industry leading organisations must invest to improve the processing, storage, and querying of IoT data. As industry leaders revel in the capabilities of the devices, they should also remember to embrace the challenges and best practices of data management.
Will Moore’s Law may need a revision upwards as data volumes explode and analytical demands growing just as fast? It’s something to consider seriously as we all evaluate everything from the latest handset, and play the newest 4K and 3Ds game via a virtual reality goggles, and check to make sure we locked our cars at the airport parking lot via that mobile app on our phones.
The author of this blog is Paul Hughes, director of Strategy for Netcracker Technology
Comment on this article below or via Twitter: @IoTNow_ OR @jcIoTnow