INCOMPAS Spring 2017 - Day 2 Show Daily

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THE INCOMPAS SHOW DAY 2
IoT Device Market Set to Increase in Complexity
New research has revealed that the
internet of things (IoT) market will be
littered with applications and devices
meant to simplify the consumers’ lives, and the
resulting fragmentation will be profound.
According to a report published by Share-
Tracker (Booth 313), traditional internet-
connected devices like PCs, routers and printers
have a brand leader that carry 25 percent or
more of the device market share. In contrast,
emerging segments, including home automa-
tion, security, wearables and smart TVs, are
dominated—for now—by brands that were first-
to-market within the segments. Additionally, tradi-
tional connected devices (routers, PCs, tablets
and cellular phones) had two to three times more
device suppliers than emerging device families.
The quarterly research project, designed to
track IoT emergence and market share trends,
was conducted in Q4 2016 (prior to the holiday
shopping season). It found that PCs, laptops and
cell phones account for 56 percent residential
IoT devices, once the most common connected
devices (routers/access points) are removed
from the calculation. Printers and smart TVs
follow, both accounting for 14 percent of the
device family share.
ShareTracker will be sharing updated Q1
details on April 19 in an INCOMPAS Brown
Bag webinar.
Other trends will shake up the device
industry as well.
“Security promises to be one of the more inter-
esting battleground areas in IoT, as the mixture of
network-based services, like ADT and Comcast,
will challenge the homegrown device-focused appli-
cations like Vivint, Google and Amazon,” said the
firm. “This is also the device family that appears to
present the most geographical fragmentation across
the 11 markets measured. This geographic fragmen-
tation offers some clear growth opportunities for
ambitiously growing security services with markets
like Los Angeles and St. Louis, where no clear
market share leader for security services exists.”
The research also, unsurprisingly found, that
customers utilizing telco operators for internet
connectivity accounted for 65 percent of the smart
TV and streaming connected devices. Interest-
ingly, cable providers were more likely to have
gaming connected devices, accounting for 54
percent of those devices. Preliminary findings also
suggest interesting differences among Hispanic
connected-device trends, including a higher
percentage utilizing streaming connected devices,
which will be a key data point to follow quarterly.
The rapidly growing IoT market will require
device manufacturers and carriers to be agile
and flexible with business plans and distribution
models, the firm added: “The chaotic evolution
of connected devices/IoT will hinge largely on
protocol standardization, similar to the early
technology debates like GSM/CDMA and Beta/
VCR. Although considering there are 11 different
protocols in the mix, it might look more like the
cellular debates around LTE banding, which
is a terrifying prospect, although the $6 trillion
market opportunity over the next five years, per
Business Insider, will make navigating the chaos
worth the headache.” p