Top 10 IoT predictions for 2019

Being inside the IoT bubble, I'm in danger of not being able to see the forest for all those trees. And we all know about "annual predictions" and their eventual accuracy. With some trepidation, and for anyone interested, here is my take on what is likely to happen in 2019, based on trends that I've noticed in Australia in 2018, and on no objective data at all, just IMHO.

1. IoT device deployments will continue to multiply exponentially

2018 we saw a large upswing in the numbers of IoT devices, available, and being deployed, both wired and wireless, but particularly wireless battery operated units.  Smart Cities and Agriculture were the main vertical markets where these devices are being deployed, with many "proof of concept" (PoC) projects underway. My prediction is that we will start to see many more of these PoC style projects with more organisations dipping their toes into IoT, while the early adopters start to get some larger "business-case-proven" deployments underway. We will also see new verticals emerging as demand generators, see point 4 below.

2. NB-IoT will again struggle to get going - but for different reasons than 2018

The biggest surprise in the LPWAN space for me in 2018, was that there was very little noise coming from the NB-IoT players in Australia. I'd really expected a big push by the Telco's on challenging the public-band LPWAN technologies such as Sigfox and LoRaWAN. It didn't happen. In my opinion, there is tension within the Telcos about what flavour of IoT they are going to promote. Will it be NB-IoT, or will it be 5G? And what does 5G-IoT even look like? There are whole IoT applications that could be lost for the Telco IoT players if they don't start getting traction soon. Use cases such as smart-waste, smart-parking and agricultural sensing are increasingly being dominated by the non-cellular LPWAN technologies and will be hard to displace. My prediction is that we'll see more NB-IoT use-cases, particularly in smart-water-metering in the big cities. However the market pressures, conflicted technology options, and organisational upheavals, and particularly a lack of market ready devices, on the cellular sides of the Telco's businesses, will continue to distract them from making a concerted and powereful IoT domination play.

3. IoT Startups will multiply

One of the most satisfying things about working in IoT, is seeing the emergence of new opportunities for applications and business models that weren't even possible a couple of years ago. As more people get their heads around how IoT works and what is possible, I believe there will be an enormous amount of investment in startups and new business concepts. This also means that people providing workspace and other services to startups will have a good year. Take note local, state and national governments, this is where you can start to differentiate your cities/regions/states/countries from the ones that just make cheap stuff, or pull stuff out of the ground. Innovation is the key to future prosperity, no matter where you live.

4. 2019 - the year of Prop Tech

12 months ago we had zero inquiries from anyone in the property development and management industry. About 6 months ago we started hearing a term called "Prop Tech" (property technology) and a large upswing of interest from this vertical, wanting to find new ways to make their buildings "smart", that doesn't involve high cost items like wires, traditional BMS vendors, or some of the security concerns that are inherent in IP based networks. My prediction is that there will be an explosion of "PoC" projects in Prop Tech next year due to the opportunities for better building amenity and energy cost savings on offer.

5. Shake out and consolidation in IoT Platforms

A feature of the IoT landscape at the moment is dozens of "IoT cloud platform solutions" looking for a problem to solve.  Many of them have arrived too early, because there is not enough mass deployments yet to justify large financial investments in "Big Data" platforms for IoT.  We often hear that many of them "won't get out of bed for less than $50k", but those platforms that can help customers scale from small beginnings and PoC's will reap the benefit of customers eventually super-scaling their IoT deployments. I believe we will see some M&A in this space and other platform players falling by the wayside in 2019.

6. LoRaWAN will dominate the LPWAN space

Although I will cop accusations of being biased - true, as Meshed only provides LoRaWAN products and services - using the observations from our business at Meshed in 2018, LoRaWAN is rapidly gaining mass market acceptance as the IoT network of choice for Low Power deployments. LoRaWAN has some natural technical and business advantages over it's main competitors, particularly Sigfox, that customers are becoming increasingly aware of. LoRaWAN is not controlled by a single company, but by a large alliance of companies, creating a very competitive landscape, with many manufacturers vying for product and quality leadership. LoRaWAN also allows for many different business models to be available for customers to choose from, including Free-Public, Paid-Private, Telco-style-paid-public, and hybrids of all of these. Customers love flexibility, and not being locked-in to a single business model or Telco. They like that, with LoRaWAN, they can change provider without needing to junk their technology investment. My prediction is that LoRaWAN will increase market share over it's competition this year, particularly in Australia which has different market dynamics to the EU and USA, often due to enormous distances between populations, and very poor, or zero, cellular coverage in many places.

7. The Things Network will continue to disrupt the Telcos

Disruption is the name of the game in technology, and the large national and international telco's and software providers have been dominating the telecommunications market for years. Never have they had to compete with a product that is free to use, anywhere, and where free public coverage can be created very cheaply by anybody. Think about it...a global, crowd-sourced, telecommunications network - now that's disruptive. Just like Google and other on-line players disrupted advertising revenues for the big media companies back in the naughties, and Wikipedia ruined the party for Encyclopdia companies in the 90's, The Things Network offers a brilliantly useful IoT telecommunications network for free, but pays for itself with value-added services for organisations that want higher pay-for-use availability requirements. A disruptive game changer for telecommunications. My observation is that the Telco's are a little bit paralysed in the face of The Things Network, as they didn't factor a no-cost competitor into their calculations when they made their business plans for IoT markets. My prediction for 2019 is that The Things Network will at least double in size, and will become even more "commercial grade" as serious players like local, state and national governments, universities and enterprise businesses increasingly get involved and become base-station hosts.

8. Blockchain will actually become useful

Having ridden the hype curve to new heights, blockchain has recently suffered the "trough of disillusionment" as the crypto's crumble and ICO's tank. There is no doubt that blockchain offers significant value as a "proof-of" technology, particularly where automated IoT sensor data can be inserted, with no opportunity for pollution by human error/fraud. My prediction is that we will start to see real wins for IoT related blockchain projects in 2019, particularly in agriculture/food supply-chain, and location services.

9. Systems Integrators will get involved

I've been surprised by the lethargy displayed by most SI's towards IoT. Having grown fat, lazy and risk-averse from the IP based networks, applications, licensing, network operations, cloud hosting, and plethora of other IT services over the last couple of decades, they have not jumped into IoT services with the same levels of enthusiasm. Caution and wariness have been the main strategies deployed by hype-fatigued SI's lately. However they shouldn't forget what the start of the internet looked like back in the 90's, which was the birth place for many of their own businesses, for an idea of what is to come with IoT in the next year or so. My prediction is that smart SI's will start to play in the IoT space, due to customers spending money there (currently with startups and new players), and the need for the SI's to counter declines in revenue and profit in the hyper-competitive IT services space.

10. The emergence of analytics, AI, ML and edge computing in IoT

Alluded to in prediction #5 above, there has not been enough data being created by IoT devices to run serious AI and ML platforms. I believe that this will change in 2019, as millions of additional sensors are deployed, a much richer ingestion will be available to analytics engines and AI.  A good example is what is already happening with Prop Tech where IoT data and information can be used to great advantage, to save money on energy costs, and to predict equipment faults and failures.  In 2018 we've seen some great examples of edge computing innovations where high-throughput computing is used, for example, on a video-camera to count people, cars, buses, etc (thanks UoW Smart Infrastructure) and then sending simple count-data over the LoRaWAN networks for analytical processing. With high quality data and accurate insights being transmitted from the edge, AI and ML can be even more effective.