The IoT relies on ICT to reshape traditional industries. By integrating the physical and digital worlds, the IoT has the power to revolutionize future industries. The IoT can streamline business processes, boost productivity, and give customers better products and services, while providing potential for grander innovations. After years of technological advancement and market development, the IoT is poised to unearth a world of untapped ICT opportunities. The massive ecosystem that is the IoT is predicted to facilitate 100 billion connections by 2025.
Every one of these connections has its own requirements, and every device needs intelligent sensors to be able to connect to the cloud. A single network technology cannot cater to every scenario involving the diversity of these mass connections. Network applications are fragmented and have a long time-to-market. Without End-to-End (E2E) network security, artificial intelligence, and Big Data analysis, creating value out of data is an uphill struggle. Facing such challenges, ICT partners must establish broad alliances and joint innovation. Manufacturers, operators, vendors, developers, research institutes, and government agencies each play a part in making the IoT work for us.
Industry Insights
Sam Lucero, IHS analyst
An IoT platform is essentially a virtual IoT operating system. It allows IoT application developers to perform innovation in their fields.
Tobin Richardson, President and CEO of ZigBee Alliance
An ecosystem gathers companies, service providers, and vendors. The greatest value of an ecosystem is that all players in the ecosystem can use an identical language to communicate and develop, achieving both business and market development.
Vernon Turner: Current Trends in IoT
IoT is on the horizon, trends are emerging, and the potential for innovation is high. But, good planning is needed.
Eric Xu: Ubiquitous networks are the basic service provided by operators to connect more people and devices.
As the number of IoT users surges, operators will have more room to grow and increase their revenues.
Ken Hu: The advanced technological age of IoT is here, bringing with it great opportunities across the industry.
The massive requirements and potential applications of IoT are becoming clear: the number of IoT connections will vastly exceed connections between people. IoT is destined to benefit the global economy with transformative technologies made available for wearables, smart home appliances, smart cities, logistics management, and much more.
Guo Ping: Only 10 percent of connections are between users – the rest are between devices or between users and devices.
We expect to see 100 billion connections by 2025: 55 percent will be in the business domain and 45 percent will be for consumers. The massive number of connections will enable significant productivity gains for companies and individuals.






