The Internet of Things Will Disrupt More Than Tech

The future is already here in the form of IoT HPE Matter explains:

IoT is one of these core disrupters in technology that intersects so many fields,” says Amy Webb, CEO of Future Today Institute.

According to Gartner, 5.5 million new things will be connected each day; and by 2020, there will be some 21 billion connected devices that share data. This massive connectivity across industries is the true promise of IoT—a promise that’s encouraged industry insiders to refer to IoT as the driver of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

(1) Transportation: The connected car market is expected to hit $225 billion in 2016 (up from $32 billion in 2015) and by 2020, nearly 250 million vehicles will have automated driving capabilities.

(2) Industrial: “The Industrial IoT will not only increase the efficiency of factories, but it will fundamentally change the way manufacturing firms produce and do business,” said Volkhard Bregulla, VP of HPE’s Global Manufacturing and Distribution Industry. “In the future, when you order a car, the entire supply chain will be configured on the fly according to the features of your unique order. It will not take months, but days until your car is delivered. For manufacturing firms, this means they have to both digitize their plants and develop new forms of value creation and collaboration.”

(3) Retail: Imagine walking into a store, browsing the shelves, taking what you want, and, as you leave, a sensor scans your items and automatically charges your credit card. This scenario isn’t too far off. Retailers are projected to spend $2.5 billion by 2020 on sensors, beacons, RFID tags and other hardware and installation—quadruple the $670 million spent in 2015.

(4) Energy: For decades, the energy industry has established networks of millions of connected devices reliably and securely. But the grid is getting even smarter, using data, machine learning, sensors and Wi-Fi to let meters, pipes and other equipment talk to each other in real time and identify potential problems before they happen. In fact, energy companies are expected to install one billion smart meters by 2020 to meet energy demand.

In the not-too-distant future, companies will create portals where consumers and small businesses can trade their energy and consumption online, selling surplus energy from batteries charged by solar panels and electric vehicles, according to a report by management consulting firm DestinHaus.

(5) Medical: As the price point for wearable devices drops and wireless infrastructure becomes more reliable, healthcare data will increasingly go wireless. Machina Research expects the number of connected healthcare devices to increase from the roughly 140 million devices today to 1.3 billion in 2025—the fastest growing IoT sector over the next 10 years. That data could eventually predict problems like high blood pressure and diabetes complications—potentially reducing emergency room admissions.