Last year we saw a huge amount of growth in the IOT industry with adopters in manufacturing, transportation, utilities and healthcare leading the race. The Manufacturing sector spent an estimated $178 billion last year, transportation $78 billion and utilities at around $69 billion. Overall, its expected to become worth $6 trillion in total between 2015 and 2020. So what does this year hold?
Retail
Big retail giants such as Amazon, Walmart, and others already have begun to steadily invest in new technologies and approaches to doing business. Drone delivery, 1 click ordering devices, systems for cataloging/organizing products and streamlining checkout and delivery are already in place. Retail and grocery stores are seeking new ways to innovate right now.
Insurance
Not typically an industry that changes quickly, the insurance industry is seeing how data can be collected which allows them to more accurately determine risks and calculate more accurate premiums. By analyzing sensors on vehicles insurance companies can determine with a high level of sophistication exactly which users are at risk and in what ways they are at greater risk. Furthermore, video and image analysis are being used to evaluate claims. In many cases drones are being used to study or evaluate damage to buildings and roof tops and other areas of interest to a claims agent.
Advertising
Devices such as Alexa and Siri have lead to a lot of speculation on how natural language processing can deliver user specific data to advertisers. Allowing them to better focus their efforts on advertising the right products to the right people. Mobile and voice enabled devices, music service products, your tv, or even your car could be used to collect, monitor and utilize peoples preferences. Taking the words right out of their daily conversations in order to sell products more effectively.
Agriculture
Everything can and should be measured in the farming environment. Moisture, sunlight, temperature, oxygen, soil, you name it. This kind of data is sent to the cloud and then processed. With expanding connectivity even in rural areas of the world, this kind of usage is becoming much more common. Drones and automated systems are also becoming a commonly accepted part of industrial farming.
Automotive
Self driving cars are growing in popularity and function. In any one of these autonomous vehicles there are over 100 sensors working in unison. Collecting information, analyzing and storing information about the world as these vehicles navigate it. With information like this its no wonder that diagnosis using these sensors is the standard. If you imagine what it would be like to combine all of this information with a voice assistant or a feature rich display its easy to see our often nebulous “check engine light” going the way of the dinosaur and being replaced with a more succinct option.
