IoT for people, a driver of value creation in France

Transform your transport time into leisure time, witness your home or office adapt to your tastes in real time, make deliveries with ease, grow old more comfortably at home... The Internet of Things (the IoT) offers new opportunities. Bridge medical gaps, transform the aesthetic of homes for the better, grant access to transport in rural areas… The IoT is also a driver of equality for all.

Thriving in France, IoT services are creating added value for citizens, companies and local authorities. However, for connected solutions to be massively integrated into our daily life, they must provide concrete answers to the ethical, legal, technological and economic issues.

The development of an IoT for people would provide the French industry with a critical competitive advantage to face the competition from digital giants.

This key finding comes as the result of an analysis conducted by the consulting firm Wavestone, carried out in partnership with the Caisse des Dép?ts group and La Poste, entitled “Liberty, Equality … Responsibility? Iot for people, a driver of value creation in France!"

The study of the market’s most advanced figures, crossed with the vision of more than forty sectoral and IoT experts made it possible to pinpoint 4 key findings:

The acceleration of services based on IoT has started in France

 At the start of 2018, the number of large-scale service industry roll outs based on IoT technology remains low and is restricted to a few dozen across all sectors.

However, since 2017, France is the leading capital destination in Europe for IoT ; a very sharp rise was observed during the second half of the year. Therefore, French companies are preparing for this acceleration as many of them integrate the IoT in their strategic development plans (launching IoT programs, creation of dedicated entities, etc.) in order to go beyond the experimentation phase. All players that fail to integrate the IoT in their business plans, risk lagging behind which, in the long term, could hinder their development.

The IoT’s potential value is certain

To date, 1% of its potential has been revealt!

In 2017, the number of connected devices surpassed the number of people on earth, this gap is only set to widen. The IoT is slowly but surely converting our environment into one of communication. We have increasingly accurate knowledge of the state of our towns and countries, our transport systems, our public spaces and our homes. The services of the future will emerge from the use and intelligent blending of these data. We can therefore speak of omni-connectivity, even hyper-connectivity.

The IoT, combined with other Deep Tech (artificial intelligence, biotechnologies), will experience a paradigm shift: our environment will adapt itself to our lives, to our everyday behavior, our whimsical desires, and not the other way around as it is today. 

The IoT opens up value chains by inducing more appetite for control of connected environments 

Understanding users’ needs, mastering client relations, the ability to unify and manipulate end-to-end services, are all decisive weapons for developing new B2C and B2B2C services. 

In this battle, digital giants will be tough opponents. They are currently engaging in a bitter fight to control communicative environments and the data associated with them: smart phones and smart cars for mobility; smart homes for housing. The battle that is currently raging on smart speakers between GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon) clearly illustrates this competition to control connected environments. 

French stakeholders in mobility, buildings, housing and healthcare are not inactive when faced with the competition of digital giants.

They are multiplying initiatives and partnerships, among themselves and with startups. Moving beyond this proliferation period, a number of strategic questions arise: What will be the winning movements?

A number of trends seem to emerge:

• Promote the strategic assets of national companies (digital sovereignty, trusted third-party, proximity) in response to digital giants;
• Anticipate and benefit from the opening of value chains brought about by the IoT with particular focus on the final user;
• Reinforce leading market positions to improve performance and innovative services.

Protecting citizens and defending public interest does not hinder but rather encourages the development of a French IoT

IoT for people will grant a competitive edge as the market’s tool for adopting IoT solutions.

It provides reassuring answers to the ethical questions (delegation of decision-making, humans maintaining control, confidentiality management, societal cohesion, job retention, etc.), legal and regulatory questions (personal data, assurance, traceability, material and immaterial property rights, legislative frameworks of concerned sectors, etc.), technologies (system interoperability, links with artificial intelligence systems, telephone network coverage, cybersecurity, transparency of algorithms and systems, etc.), or even economic questions (the dynamism of the IoT industry in France, production costs of sensors and systems and large scale projects etc.).

The IoT will be what we make of it. We will see its benefits and the faults that need tending to only through medium term use.

To read our entire study and to discover more about how the IoT transforms French people’s everyday lives, visit our website wavestone.com!