IoT Trends we will see throughout 2019

by Peter Scully, Guest Contributor

Here are four IoT developments we expect to see during the course of 2019.

The internet of things is now making its way into the mainstream and 2019 could be the year that IoT devices genuinely start to become commonplace household items

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5G will become the new WiFi
One of the ironies of the 21st-century world is that even in cities, there are people who are cut off from secure, private, high-speed internet access, for example, because they are renting and their landlord does not want any risk of being held responsible for misuse of the connection. At this point in time, mobile data isn’t bad, but nor is it something you want to use for bandwidth-heavy activities either. The launch of 5G should help to change all that and may even alter demographics once it is rolled out to rural areas some of which are brutally underserved in terms of internet access.

Smart home appliances will move towards becoming the standard rather than the exceptions
To begin with, smart home appliances were often viewed as something of a gimmick for tech-heads and the lazy, but now more and more people are realizing that they are genuinely far more useful than their “dumb” counterparts. Many of them also offer environmental benefits, for example, by helping people to manage their electricity usage more efficiently, which, of course, has a great deal of appeal to modern consumers.

There will be a return to device-based processing
Over recent years, cloud-based computing has taken off in a big way and there are a lot of good reasons for this, hence it is unlikely that either businesses or individuals are going to abandon it any time soon, if ever. At the same time, however, cloud-based computing does have its limitations, especially in terms of speed, while hardware is very affordable even for smaller companies (although, of course, it does require maintenance and security). As a result, 2019 will probably see companies (and tech-savvy individuals) become increasingly mindful about when they use the cloud and when they use local processing and may well choose to upgrade their local resources to allow for greater speed and potentially greater security by eliminating the need for data to be transported into the cloud.

Cybersecurity will continue to grow in importance
This comment is really self-evident. The more we live our lives online, the more we become vulnerable to cyber attacks and hence the more important cybersecurity becomes. What will be interesting is how the field of cybersecurity develops. At the moment, it is very much dominated by a few key players and it is possible that industry dominance will beget further industry dominance, or, in other words, that the tech giants have become unstoppable juggernauts to the point that there are only niche scraps on the table for anyone else who wants to compete in the area (and presumably only until they get big enough to come to the attention of the giants). On the other hand, some of these tech giants have reputational issues themselves at the moment, which could leave the door open for smaller companies to step in.

Author Bio:
Peter Scully is a marketing consultant for Components Bureau, a manufacturer of word class electronic components used in a variety of industries including commercial lighting and industrial power supplies.

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