IoT Seen Making Big Shift Toward ‘Mainstream Adoption’ This Year, Survey Finds

Business professionals in many industries see IoT making a big shift toward “mainstream adoption” in 2016, Gartner said Thursday in a survey report. The research firm canvassed 465 firms in 18 business sectors globally in November and found 29 percent using IoT products or services, it said. An additional 14 percent are planning to implement IoT in the coming 12 months, with 21 percent more planning to implement IoT after 2016, it said. “The number of organizations adopting IoT will grow 50 percent in 2016, reaching 43 percent of organizations overall.” In the “aggregate,” 64 percent “plan to eventually implement IoT,” it said. “It is also important to note that another 38 percent have no plans to implement IoT, including 9 percent that see no relevance whatsoever in the technologies.” IoT adoption remains low because “many organizations have yet to establish a clear picture of what benefits the IoT can deliver, or have not yet invested the time to develop ideas for how to apply IoT to their business,” Gartner said. "However, we are poised for a marked shift in focus toward customer-facing benefits for planned IoT implementations, positioning IoT as a key competitive marketplace weapon going forward."