The exponential growth of the connected objects market
Automatically adjusting the temperature of your home according to the temperature outside, locating your bike when it’s stolen, knowing when your plants need watering, opening your shutters at the same time as your alarm clock rings. All these developments, which simplify our lives, are made possible by the “Internet of Things”, IoT.
The term “Internet of Things” (IoT), coined in 1999 by the British technologist Kevin Ashton, describes a network that connects physical objects to each other: appliances, computers, machines.
At that time, the notion of IoT was science fiction. Today, the IoT is an omnipresent reality in our daily lives.
To reach this level of “intelligence”, the object must be connected to the internet or to a smartphone, it will then interact autonomously with its environment thanks to the data it captures.
What makes them intelligent is their ability to interact with other objects and their capacity to store and reuse the data received to use it later and trigger actions.
Between 2019 and 2022, the average annual growth in IoT spending worldwide is estimated at 11% and the amount of IoT spending in 2022 had reached €920bn. According to Statista, by 2030, the number of connected objects is estimated at 36 billion and the market is expected to continue to grow rapidly. These forecasts show that the market for these objects is still at the very beginning of its expansion.
As Lionel Sujay Vailshery, research expert for the consumer electronics industry at Statista, said,”As the technology advances, the cost of components decreases, driving the mass deployment of IoT in industry […]”. The widespread use of this technology suggests significant gains in productivity and traceability in many industrial sectors.
And the number of active service robots worldwide is expected to reach 264.3 million by 2026, growing at an average of 24% per year.
However, although the market for this technology appears to be exponential, Eurostat data shows that French companies are lagging behind in technologies related to the Internet of Things. With 22% of companies using connected objects in 2021, France is doing worse than the EU average (29%). The best equipped companies in Europe are in Austria (51%), while countries like Sweden (40%) and Germany (36%) are also among the most advanced.
There is no doubt that connected objects around the world will have a huge and positive impact on life and the economy. However, not everyone is in agreement about the development of these objects.
The information transmitted by a connected object to an application is stored in one way or another, and this data is often personal data, sometimes even sensitive data. This may, for example, concern an individual’s health, weight, or the places they visit, and the subjects concerned are not always aware that a third party could theoretically consult them.
Sources:
https://fr.statista.com/infographie/26708/internet-des-objets-part-des-entreprises-utilisant-objets-connectes-france-europe/
https://fr.statista.com/themes/2972/les-objets-connectes/#dossierKeyfigures
https://fr.statista.com/statistiques/584685/appareils-connectes-portables-dans-le-monde–2020/
https://fr.statista.com/statistiques/787180/valeur-du-marche-objets-connectes-france/
