Top Trends in IoT That Will Rule 2022

Brilliant! This is the word that I use to explain last year’s IoT adoption. Amidst the horrors of the second wave that hit major countries,  implementing contactless processes using IoT-enabled technologies was the highlight. It was an opportunity in disguise for the enterprises to prove the social-economic impact of the technology and launch intelligent systems. As a result, the number of connected devices is breaking records and surpassing all previous predictions. As per Ericsson, 2022 could end with 29 billion connected devices.

Here’s more on the key trends that could actualize the prediction.

Increased Adoption of AI-Enabled Voice Interfaces

VUIs or voice user interfaces allow users to interact with a system like Siri or Alexa via speech or voice commands. These virtual assistants are voice-enabled and can help their users speed up their workflow. VUIs provide a seamless experience as you can interact with a product without touching or looking at it. Let’s look at an example to understand this well. It is now so much easier to track routes and traffic while driving. We can access all this information easily without having to work through a smart device.

IoT and artificial intelligence work together and allow voice assistants to provide real-time language translation. This certainly helps people remove any language barriers while improving the overall quality of their business. The market for AI in IoT is expected to grow at a CAGR of 27.3% (2021-2026).

The applications and significance of voice technology continue to grow more widespread with time. Even though these interfaces had been initially crucial for navigation during driving today people seem to depend on them for completing a larger degree of smart home tasks.

It wasn’t very long ago that Amazon came up with their Voice Interoperability Initiative that allows users with different voice assistant services by only calling out their names.

Growing Communities & Marketplaces

There’s no hesitation in accepting the lack of IoT resources. Over the years, businesses have been locking horns with half-baked skills that ultimately derailed many projects. That’s the case with any new technology and IoT is no different. Due to the unavailability of on-demand resources, many IoT projects either get delayed or don’t go on the production floor at all. In worse cases, the outcome lacks quality and they do not comply with necessary security protocols. This deserves a separate discussion.

Marketplaces are a silver lining here. These platforms have lessened the gap between professional skills and enterprises. AT&T, for example, provides a platform for the rapid deployment of IoT projects. The idea is to simplify the implementation of basic applications. They also provide on-demand services to perform the custom deployment.

AT&T and Ioterra provide a dedicated IoT marketplace for enterprises to browse through and connect with different types of IoT professionals. The platform features hardware engineers, software engineers, network experts, prototype designers, solution architects, and others to name a few. The marketplace has grown significantly and helped in the timely completion of numerous IoT projects.

While we are at it, it is equally important to acknowledge the role of forums, communities, and social media platforms. All these mediums have contributed to producing a more intact community.

Industrial IoT (IIoT) on the Rise

This one makes to our list every year. After all, manufacturing spaces have proven to be the most important use case of IoT product development. Among many, predictive maintenance & real-time monitoring are the prime applications.

Predictive maintenance and real-time monitoring make sure that no work processes are interrupted and in turn ensure that business operations stay intact. By analyzing the data collected regularly you can easily foresee when to replace parts or access them for maintenance or risk of collapse. Analytics also provide recommendations that can allow you to increase the efficiency of the machines or optimize any specific unit.

The best is that such installed systems give your machines the ability to alert you about problems beforehand. With this information, engineers can easily troubleshoot or fix the problem before causing any serious machinery/system from malfunctioning. Traditionally workers keep up with manual checking which is a time-consuming and tedious process.

Now, IoT can improve all these different protocols and procedures along with reducing costs. It also allows you to monitor everything in real-time and uses it to improve the overall customer experience for your users.

Accelerated Adoption of IoT due to 5G

If we are looking to power a successful IoT system then ultra-low latency and hyper-connectivity are the two most important elements. 5G comes with the technology that will make IoT access more widespread. As of now, cellular companies and service providers are currently working to bring this new technology to their areas thereby supporting IoT adoption by multiple folds.

As more and more commercial 5G networks surface worldwide, 5G expansion will allow businesses to digitize while staying more mobile, flexible, secure, and reliable. If we look at manufacturing plants then we can see that all the machinery is hard-wired as Wi-Fi may not always be fast, reliable, or secure. This gap can be bridged with the help of 5G. It gives us the best of both worlds –the flexibility of a wireless system along with the reliability and speed of a system with wires.

This is why 5G is now creating a tipping point.

With the introduction of the 5G technology, we now have a low enough latency and sufficient bandwidth to create a flexible wireless network enabling developers to the whole new set of use cases. Imagine the possibilities that lie in the future.

IoT in Acton

So far, we discussed the 4 most important trends that would set the narrative for the industry of connected devices. With Web 3.0 gaining ground, this is an opportunity for companies to hone their talent and produce qualitative products. IoT is a household name now!