The integration, storage, analysis and presentation of IoT data is expected to become a $30 billion market in 2021, based on a 29.4 percent compound annual growth rate, ABI Research said in a Monday report. “Descriptive analytics currently generate more than 75 percent of IoT analytics revenue,” the firm said. “But over the next five years, rapid uptake of advanced analytics will overtake descriptive analytics’ share of revenue to the extent that predictive and prescriptive analytics will account for more than 60 percent of IoT analytics revenue by 2021.” There will come the need to “harmonize IoT ecosystem components without creating or simply shifting the bottlenecks that come with the management of high-velocity variable data,” it said. That will put pressure “on connectivity providers, edge analytics platform players, and system integrators to stand up new and distributed frameworks,” it said.

NTIA should keep the interests of competitive carriers in mind in its April request for comment on the government's role in encouraging the growth of the IoT (see 1604060030), the Competitive Carriers Association said in a Thursday news release. Comments were due Thursday. The IoT “is here and ever-growing, and to remain competitive in the marketplace and provide consumers with the services they want and demand, competitive carriers must incorporate IoT into their business plans,” said CCA President Steve Berry. “There is a lot NTIA, the FCC and Congress can do to make sure IoT technology is widely, competitively deployed. For example, there are several proceedings before the FCC, including the Spectrum Frontiers proceeding, the incentive auction, and the business data services proceeding, that will have a huge impact on IoT development and deployment, and I strongly encourage the Commission to consider the impact that these proceedings will have on competitive carriers’ abilities to provide IoT opportunities to their customers.” ACT|The App Association, which provided us its comments to NTIA, said the security and privacy of users’ data through end-to-end encryption is vital to maintain trust and rejected calls (see 1604180048) from law enforcement for back doors to such encrypted devices and data. The group also emphasized coordination among federal agencies as “essential” for IoT to progress. Such coordination will help “avoid duplicative or conflicting regulations and parallel efforts,” among other benefits, the group said.

IoT products will overtake mobile phones as the largest category of connected devices by 2018, Ericsson said in a Wednesday report. Ericsson predicts shipments of IoT connected devices will grow 23 percent annually through 2021, the report said. Of the 28 billion total devices that will be connected by 2021, close to 16 billion will be IoT devices, it said. Western Europe will lead the way in adding IoT connections, it said. The number of IoT devices in Western Europe will increase 400 percent by 2021, it said: "IoT is now accelerating as device costs fall and innovative applications emerge. From 2020, commercial deployment of 5G networks will provide additional capabilities that are critical for IoT, such as network slicing and the capacity to connect exponentially more devices than is possible today."

State chief information officers should write IoT policies, the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) said in a policy brief Wednesday. Most states are discussing IoT only informally, if at all, NASCIO said. “Without specific policy on IoT, states will be caught unprepared to deal with the myriad of issues that can arise with increasing connectedness.” Issues include security, privacy, accessibility, financing, legislation and data management and standardization, it said. States aren’t as far along as cities in developing an IoT road map, but a “smart state” can benefit like a “smart city,” it said. “While a state may not have a bus system to connect to an app, states may use sensor data, mobile platforms, or analytics software for healthcare, transportation or public safety.”

The ULE Alliance, which promotes ULE technology as a standard for home wireless networks, said Wednesday that a Huawei-built ULE gateway, branded as Qivicon powered by Deutsche Telekom, received ULE certification. The tests were done at AT4 wireless, the official ULE testing and certification partner. Alliance members are eligible to certify ULE devices, and the application for certification is at www.ulealliance.org, it said.

The Z-Wave Alliance began taking applications for the 2016 Z-Wave Labs competition, which this year adds a chance to have a product featured at CES 2017, the alliance emailed us Tuesday. The accelerator program gives winners with an IoT product or service design access to the Z-Wave Alliance ecosystem, partners and resources along with Z-Wave IoT-ready development kits to “jumpstart their product roadmap and get their IoT product to market,” said the alliance. New winners are selected each month by the Z-Wave Labs program from areas including residential, commercial, automotive, healthcare, energy, security and aging-in-place. The competition is open to any startup or entrepreneur who wants to use the Z-Wave wireless platform in its IoT offering, it said. In addition to receiving a yearlong full membership to the Z-Wave Alliance, Z-Wave Labs winners will have the chance to be featured in the Z-Wave booth in the smart home exhibit at Sands Expo at CES 2017, it said.

Ayla Networks will be among the IoT platform companies prospecting for business at the Parks’ Associates Connections connected home conference in San Francisco this week. Ayla's platform turns products into connected systems with a promise of quick time to market and cloud-based analytics showing how consumers use the products. “Nest was a game-changer,” Rod McLane, Ayla senior director-product marketing, told us. The connected Nest Learning Thermostat “prompted a lot of traditional manufacturers to sit up and take notice that they have to have a strategy” for the connected home market, McLane said. Ayla bills itself as a software, software-as-a-service (SaaS) and platform-as-a-service company that allows existing businesses to compete in the connected world and to be able to adjust quickly to make changes to any device or app as needed. In the home space, Ayla customers include water heater maker AO Smith, electric fireplace vendor Dimplex, Hunter Fan and United Technologies Electronic Controls’ brands Carrier air conditioning units and Kidde smoke alarms. Ayla’s strategy is to work with well-established manufacturers that are “good at what they do” but don’t have core expertise in connectivity. “It comes down to a build or buy decision,” said McLane. “They can hire engineers or buy an existing platform.” Value-added services available through Ayla enable companies to harness the data available from connected devices, said Wendy Toth, Ayla vice president-marketing and product management. Manufacturers can opt in to the services based on their goals. Toth said that through a link to customers that previously didn’t exist data analytics can tell manufacturers how their products are being used, where they're sold and what additional features users might want. Connectivity also enables products to be updated in the field, she said, and dealers and service reps can benefit from data monitoring services that report when a product needs maintenance or repair. Ayla integrates with the Zonoff platform that’s the foundation for Staples’ Connect offering, said McLane.

The ZigBee Alliance said it's added 38 members from 15 countries this year -- including startups and major brands -- bringing the total count to more than 425 companies. “ZigBee 3.0 is generating explosive interest” via its “consolidated approach” to the IoT market, said alliance CEO Tobin Richardson Thursday. Board members are Comcast Cable, Itron, Kroger, Landis+Gyr, Legrand Group, Midea Group, NXP Semiconductors, Philips, Schneider Electric, Silicon Labs, SmartThings, Texas Instruments and Wulian. Chairman John Osborne cited General Electric’s recent buy of Daintree Networks by Current and Qorvo’s GreenPeak acquisition as indicators of the industry’s “large-scale investment in ZigBee technologies.”

The increasing use of IoT-based home automation technology “has the potential for substantial energy savings and greenhouse gas emissions reductions,” CTA said in a study released Thursday. Widespread adoption of home automation products such as temperature, circuit and lighting control, if used for energy savings purposes, “could collectively avoid up to 100 million tons of CO2 emissions and reduce total residential primary energy consumption by as much as 10 percent,” CTA said. The research “proves the innovation consumer technology delivers into our hands and homes through the Internet of Things can significantly reduce our carbon footprint -- whether that’s the household energy we use on our own or the carbon emissions our country produces,” CTA President Gary Shapiro said in a statement. The study is “the first of its kind” to show how “our increased use of several types of connected devices and systems can decrease our overall home energy use,” said Douglas Johnson, CTA vice president-technology policy. “While the concept and practice of home automation have been around for decades, the continuous reduction of installation costs means more and more consumers are able to access and benefit from this technology. And home automation tech delivers potential benefits to utilities as well, such as enhanced demand response capabilities and the intelligent segmentation of homes -- both of which would eventually lower consumers’ costs.”

The information technology and operational technology industries are moving beyond IoT buzz and deploying intelligent systems in vertical markets including retail, industrial automation, automotive systems and homes, an IDC study said. Intelligent systems will grow at a compounded annual rate of 7.2 percent from 2015 to 2020 with revenue topping $2.2 trillion worldwide by 2010, IDC said. As processors, microcontrollers and connectivity are embedded into new devices, "edge intelligence" in smart appliances, industrial machines and automobiles continues to increase, IDC analyst Mario Morales said. "A radical transformation is underway from the cloud to the edge of every major system,” analyst Les Santiago said. Edge and cloud infrastructures need to continue to scale and support “trillions of sensors and billions of systems" to meet the opportunity, Santiago said. "Increasing intelligence at the edge will be one of the primary drivers of growth of the overall semiconductor market over the next few years against the backdrop of a maturing smartphone and PC market and a difficult pricing environment in the memory markets,” he said. Vendors would benefit from structuring their product portfolios to take advantage of the trend, he said.