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www.bekabusinessmedia.com

THE

INCOMPAS

SHOW

DAY

2

IoT Device Market Set to Increase in Complexity

N

ew 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.”

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