Five years ago, analysts estimated 50 billion devices by 2020.

With a new decade just around the corner and the number of connected devices sitting at the single digit mark, you might think this missed projection signals failure but really it is just a symptom of overhype. Actually, IoT growth shows no signs of slowing down.

Research from Arm estimates one trillion devices by [...]

A WEEK IN IoT – 5G is starting strong, says Huawei. The company’s deputy chairman, Ken Hu, told its annual Mobile Broadband Forum (#MBBF) in Zurich, Switzerland last week that 5th Generation mobile communications “arrived faster than expected,” and that there are now 40 carriers in more than 20 countries supporting 136 different 5G-enabled devices.

Going from millions to billions of connections with the Internet of Things (IoT) will see deployments with massive, multi-region footprints. However, each of these connections will need to be managed with capabilities installed, activated and maintained. The challenge here is that traditional connectivity is not sufficiently automated, is inflexible and, often as a result of management [...]

Companies using or offering IoT-based products and services don’t want to be IoT network managers. Their focus is on digitally transforming their businesses, harnessing new capabilities and adopting new business models enabled by IoT. Time spent learning how to manage connectivity is a distraction that could also cause cost increases, delayed service introduction and lost competitive [...]

Online giants such as Google, Amazon and Facebook talk in terms of being webscale as if that is the largest possible market size that can be imagined. Yes, in comparison to traditional, physical markets, webscale is enormous. It certainly dwarfs the market for consumer connections such as cellphones or home internet connections which have a top end customer base limit of the world’s entire [...]

The number of IoT connections has been routinely projected to be in the billions during the early 2020s and, at last, momentum appears to have arrived with the millions of devices rolled out to date forming the basis for billions in the not too distant future. However, there is room for confusion within these predictions which stems from what constitutes an IoT connection. Research [...]

Robin Duke-Woolley (RD-W) interviews Brent Pietrzak (BP), the senior vice president and general manager of the Supplier Division at Flexera Software.

In a cash-only deal announced today, Hansen Technologies, based in Australia, is to acquire Canada’s Sigma Systems for CAN$157 million. The deal took market watchers by surprise and in an exclusive interview with IoT Now, Tim Spencer, CEO of Sigma describes what led to the deal. 

As one wag put it at last year’s Mobile World Congress, “There sure are a load of mobile phones at this car show.” While drivers focused on the cars in Barcelona this year, the industry has been diving into the details of vehicle autonomy. And, as with so much at MWC19, says Jeremy Cowan, 5th Generation (5G) mobile communications is at the heart of it.   

THE WEEK IN 5G – The ding dong battle over the acceptability, or otherwise, of Huawei’s involvement in national 5G infrastructure projects is intensifying, says Jeremy Cowan.