IoTgnosis

Last year I attended one of these IoT networking events with speakers from a couple of IoT industry players. The discussion suddenly turned tense when one of the speakers categorically stated that the main value of IoT was the data collected. Yes, I participated in that discussion by stating along the lines of my previous blog that there was plenty of product margin to be derived from IoT and that this was just as important as any data derived. So what is the value of IoT data? Well, it depends on what the data is, how it is collected and 'what it means'! In a previous consulting engagement I worked with a company that collected a tremendous amount of data on a daily basis. The company was flooded by requests from then 'hot' data analytics companies who wanted to 'partner' and explore the data. The fact that this data belonged to customers did not seem to ever have entered their thoughts nor the fact that this data may simply be useless static data collected...

Lost in the current blog and conference discussions about IoT is talk about the potential economic value of IoT. Like with most evolving technologies it takes a while for the true economic value to clearly appear so instead discussions abound about potentials and examples pulled from the real world or the imaginary world of conference rooms and offices. As most companies are very private about their detailed budgets and financial statements, real world examples have to be guessed or depend on public statements by corporations and individuals. Which leaves us with the imaginary world of opinion, exaggerated statements and outright hyperbole. The current IoT world is filled with a combination of experts, consultants, studies delivering a steady stream of exaggerated consulting reports (I love those press releases stating that so-and-so predicts the IoT market will be $X Trillion by 2025), opinion blogs (like this one?), papers and presentations created in conference rooms (four walls m...

All new technologies go though fits and starts cycles as they are introduced into the market place. It takes many attempts and different approaches and tenacity to bring new successful technology based products to teh market place. Consumer IoT is no different. At a time when some people thought there would be 100s of different consumer IoT products we are only seeing a few categories that can show any signs of success as far as sales volume. So what is the problem with consumer IoT? In some cases we can point at technology weaknesses - chip, battery and application technology does not have quiet what is needed and we need to wait a Moore's law cycle or two before we have required product usability attributes. In other cases it is early entrants that establish initial product presence and then fail to pursue traditional market penetration strategies of lower price and differentiated product models. Google's Nest consumer IoT product lines are examples of this. Basically sitt...