Page 7 - AeM_Mar_2018

RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS

Asia's IoT optimism and adoption rate tops all

Asia's businesses are leading the world in Internet of Vodafone’s Director of IoT for APAC, Justin Nelson,
Things (IoT) adoption, according to Vodafone’s IoT said: "This is a defining moment for IoT. Asia's
Barometer 2017/18, with the number of companies businesses now see IoT as a core component of their
embracing connected devices soaring 200% compared current and future business, and their confidence in it
to five years ago. delivering a competitive advantage is soaring. "
Vodafone’s global survey of business sentiment,
relating to investment and innovation in the IoT, The report noted as well that on top of the over-
examined four key factors for modern businesses, whelming adoption numbers, the most significant
which we want to highlight in today’s issue again, factor was that IoT has been increasingly deployed at
namely the state of the market, business benefits, scale, bringing a higher ROI as a result. The widening
moving forward and future optimism. range of benefits that businesses receive, such as
greater business insights, reduced costs, and
One of the most interesting key findings, however, has
been the fact that Asia is leading the way in connected improved employee productivity are topping the list.
device adoption and showing that IoT has hit critical Regarding business benefits, improved brand
mass. In a nutshell, the report revealed that: differentiation (42%) and improved market
competitiveness (53%) are rated the primary benefit,
• 77% of Asia's businesses see IoT as mission- compared to 35% in the Americas and 33% in
critical to their business; Europe, while the ability to monetize IoT remains on
• 88% of Asian respondents have increased the average with the rest of the world at 53%.
use of IoT solutions in the past 12 months; When asked about the next steps, the surprise
• Over half (53%) of Asia's enterprises say IoT has finding was the positive framing of IoT security, which
increased their market competitiveness; rather than being a barrier to IoT deployment was
• 42% of Asia businesses have more than 1000 regarded as "giving businesses the confidence to do
connected devices and 53% are more." Asia was once again much more positive in
seeing significant returns on investment. this area with 86% of respondents hailing security as
an enabler compared to 79% globally and 83% of
businesses stating they have adequate skills to
When it came to optimism and the future, the
message Asian businesses sent to the world was manage IoT security, significantly way ahead of
even clearer, stating: Europe (70%) and the Americas (65%).
As the scale of IoT projects increases, the report also
• 91% believe IoT will have an enormous or
sizeable impact on the wider economy in the noted a rise in connectivity requirements. Businesses
next 5 years; are interested in using a mix of technologies from
fixed line to low power wide area networks (LP-
• 79% believe IoT usage will rise as security and WAN), depending on the application. Typically, large
privacy concerns greatly reduce; scale projects use four different connectivity options -
• 91% believe cross industry collaboration will with mobile and Wi-Fi being the two most popular, but
generate joint IoT solutions; newer technologies, such as Narrowband IoT (NB-
• 89% believe AI and machine learning will be IoT and other LP-WAN options finding their way into
commonplace by 2022. new IoT projects. ◊
By MediaBUZZ

MediaBUZZ Pte Ltd - Independant ePublisher for Asia