Gartner predicts explosion in enterprise and automotive IoT endpoint usage

Gartner has predicted that the enterprise and automotive IoT market will grow to 4.8 billion endpoints by the end of 2019 – and 5.8bn endpoints in 2020. The current year forecast is 21.5% rise on a year-on-year basis, whereas the next year projection is a 21% year-on-year increase, compared to the present year.

The utility sector will be the highest user of IoT endpoints, as it will total to 1.17bn endpoints in 2019 and will gradually increase to 17% in 2020, reaching 1.37bn endpoints. The building automation market will witness the largest growth rate – 42% – in 2020, predominantly driven by connected lighting devices.

By 2020, the automotive and healthcare market will grow by 31% and 29%, respectively.

In the automotive sector, vehicles embedded with IoT connectivity will be supplemented by a variety of add-on devices for specific purposes, such as fleet management, whereas in healthcare, chronic condition monitoring will be responsible to drive the most IoT endpoints.

While the analysts have positive vibes for the IoT in industrial sectors, end user research can be more pessimistic. A survey conducted in June by Longview IoT found most organisations, along with those that have already incorporated IoT projects, find it difficult to understand the business benefits of the technology.

The study found limited perspective among organisations as they like to see more ‘generalised’ results like increased productivity, cost savings, and improved operational efficiency, instead of improving worker safety, conducting predictive maintenance, solving billing issues, avoiding cost overruns, and tracking of valuable equipment.