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What Surprised You About the Results of the Premier Farnell 2018 Global IoT Survey?

rscasny

IoT is such an evolving space that every few months something new can pop up and take over the conversation. When I was forwarded Premier Farnell's 2018 Global IoT Survey today, I anxiously opened it up and was looking for the surprises--those jewels of new information that make me think "I didn't know that," or a simply a "WoW!" image

 

The survey was conducted late 2018 over a two month period and received well over a thousand responses. "Global" should be stressed here; the responses spanned 51 nations. Let me dig into my surprises and not-surprises of the survey.

 

There was no surprise that Security was on top when asked about what's the most important thing to think about when developing an IoT application. But I was very surprised that an ecosystem garnered a mere 7 percent. A number of suppliers have stressed the importance of an ecosystem to me. I'd actually like to know more about this question.

 

The big surprise and disappointment for me was that of the nearly 1,000 respondents, only 7 percent were female. I read this as a bigger issue than it appears, and goes beyond IoT. image

 

There was no surprise that Home Automation ranked as the top industry for IoT within the next 5 years. But I am blown away totally surprised that Wearables ranked at a mere 7 percent and Transportation at 8%. Say, what?  Personally, I would have ranked transportation on top. To prove my point, check out the Chicago Auto Show that is going on right now. Even Forbes would agree with me.

 

Another gigantic surprise: nearly two-thirds of the respondents said they awere not using a third-party provider to help them build their IoT solutions; rather, they are doing it themselves. Understandably, building it yourself gives you more control, but the cost....man, the cost of it all!image

 

No surprise that most of the respondents believe that data should be owned by the individual, not the entity gathering it (e.g., big websites in the news everyday).

 

Another no-surprise is that interoperability and having certified standards would be the most important way to grow the IoT.

 

IoT is an innovative and disruptive technology, right?  If so, why did only 26 percent of the respondents say that innovation was the main reason they were developing an IoT solution? Practical market needs seems to rule the day; perhaps, that's no surprise.image

 

There was no surprise that C/C++ was the choice of programming language for IoT devices. Nor was there a surprise that Wi-Fi was the preferred wireless communication protocol. But I was surprised that BLE only ranked at 27 percent, especially with BT 5.0 coming out (low power, longer range and greater data rate)

 

When asked about what hardware was used to design their IoT gateway, 50 percent mentioned SBCs. Hopefully, the Raspberry Pi is in the mix!

 

 

What do you think? What Surprised You About the Results of the Premier Farnell 2018 Global IoT Survey?

  • in reply to jomoenginer

    Yeh!

    I remember in the UK we had a bad cold snap which coincidentally was at the same time NEST had some outages.

    Because of this we heard of horror stories of people installing NEST thermostats in their elderly parents houses to help monitor the heat in the house and not being able to turn on the heating as the temperature plummeted.

     

    Wifi enabled is cool, in house hub is cool, but trusting some one elses server for hardware items is off the plate for me now image

  • in reply to e14phil

    Yeah, it is not just the Shenzhen produced products that are the issue.   I had bought a few WeMo LED Light builds with their required hub and shortly after WeMo/Belkin announced they will no longer support the bulbs or the hub.  The bulbs are supported by SmartThings so that is an alternative.

     

    I am a regular listener to the IoT Podcast and on their recent ep Stacey and Kevin discuss the news about Lowes shutting down their Iris Smart Home Platform offering customers rebates to soften the impact.  Also, they discuss recent acquisitions of WigWag by ARM (What are they up to?), LIFX by Aussie IoT vendor Buddy, and NEEO by Control4. They also had discussions, as they do, about the security issues in IoT, including how poorly it is implemented in the WeMo Light switch which oddly Stacey is giving away to a person of their selection based on who calls their hot line. They had a lawyer on the show discussing how IoT devices can and are being used in legal proceedings.  It brings up the thought of who and what are watching, listening and collecting data on you every moment of the day, even in your own home.

     

    Then there is the fun LockState OTA Firmware update fail in 2017 where they bricked over 500 so called smart locks leaving Airbnb owners and customers locked out of their places.  Turnaround time for a fix was 14-18 days.   This would be even more fun it were a Tesla.

  • I picked up a set of cheap Chinese internet cameras a few years ago (before I knew better) and this month their company went bust... Taking their servers offline rendering the cameras useless and me unable to add new ones.

     

    I will certainly not be relying on other peoples servers for a much as possible for a service standpoint never mind security.

     

    Phil

  • This was posted in Embedded Computing Design as well:

    http://www.embedded-computing.com/news/newark-element14-s-new-research-shows-hardware-s-important-role-in-iot-design

     

    I am not surprised that Security is at the top of the list as a Key Concern Regarding IoT, but what are IoT product vendors doing about this?  Every day now it seems there is another IoT device that has been hacked/cracked; most recently the Nest Camera and Thermostat. There are a ton of IoT devices that people buy up from the major vendors, and not so major vendors, many having either no security enabled or even having the default passwords still set from manufacturing.  Frank Abagnale of Catch Me if You Can fame stresses that in 5 years with the advancement of technology, a person would be able to control another persons pace-maker or even vehicle from 5000 miles away; today that is more like 35 feet. The more Things get connected, the more Things that will be cracked (or hacked if you prefer).  However, I believe it is not just vendors that need to do a better job of securing their products, but the consumer needs to be better educated regarding the hazards of using such devices and how they can prevent some of the attacks themselves. The funny thing is that if you ask a person who is a security expert, especially one in the Black Hat arena, they tend to not even want a connected device in the same room as them or even on their person.

     

    The Personal Cloud Service being at the top of the What Cloud Service Provider is Preferred (Q14) is a bit surprising; but then again not really. However, I am interested in what would be considered a Personal Cloud Service.  DropBox, iCloud or something similar.  The biggies such as AWS or Microsoft Azure Cloud have the benefit of hundreds, if not thousands of security experts to work on securing a customers data. Trying to spin this on their own may be too much for many of the IoT vendors to take on. Maybe an on-premise solution is what they are referring to.   There are the cloudless solutions such as OpenHAB or Hubitat but these are not Cloud services since they are local.

     

    I do find the results of Q8 "What is the main reason for your company developing an IoT solution" with the number 1 answer amuzing:

      "Because there is a need in the market"

    It would be interesting if these are the same folks that came up with the i-Con smart condom, Egg Minder, JuicEro, or Amazon Dash.  It has been reported that nearly 75% of IoT projects are or will fail. That certainly is not a good trend.

  • I think the biggest impediment to IoT build-out is a shortage of programmers. I'm not sure it was even on the list of options but is core to both Q1 and Q6.

    I agree with you, Transportation and industrial automation will probably be larger than the survey suggests. Those industries have the capital and real financial motivation to invest in IoT.

    Q13 - I am surprised that the 3 top operating systems in the world don't seem to be even represented in the gateway choices.