By: James Pearce
Almost a third of companies worldwide have adopted internet of things (IoT) services, according to a report by Vodafone, but the pace of adoption has slowed.
Vodafone has released its fifth annual IoT Barometer, polling 1,278 executives across eight sectors, finding 29% of companies are now using some kind of IoT solution, up from just 12% in 2013.
The number of businesses using more than 50,000 connections has doubled in the last year, as companies rollout IoT solutions across their portfolios.
The pace of new adoption, however, has slowed over the last two years, rising just 2%. Despite this, 84% of respondents said their IoT usage has grown in the last year.
Businesses in the Americas have led the way in embracing large scale IoT projects, where 19% of companies using IoT have more than 10,000 connected devices, compared to 13% in Europe and 7% in Asia Pacific.
Vodafone director of IoT Erik Brenneis said, “Over the five years of this report we have seen the number of companies that have adopted IoT double, and projects have grown from small pilots to global rollouts of tens of thousands of connected devices.
“IoT is clearly here to stay and the future looks exciting as 79% of adopters are saying that IoT will have an enormous impact on the whole economy in the next five years. I believe we can now say that IoT has come of age and is proving itself across all industries and geographies.”
The results also highlighted an interest in narrowband IoT technology (NB-IoT) with 28 per cent now considering it alongside other LPWA options for new projects. This is despite the fact rollouts of NB-IoT technology are still in the early stages in many markets, given the technology was only standardised in June 2016.