The study reveals that roughly four in five respondents believe there is a lack of consensus over the best way to strategise, deploy and monetise IoT. This is one of the key findings reported by Telecoms.com Intelligence, who conducted the study.2016 Market SurveyOf the roughly 1 000 respondents surveyed for this report, exactly 50% came from the service provider community – including MNOs, cable operators, ISPs, multiplay operators, broadcasters and cloud service providers. Service providers are frequently referred to as the great enablers of Internet of Things (IoT), and thus represents the primary market for this study. The second greatest group of respondents after service providers represent suppliers of IoT services, with 17% – this group includes hardware, software, services and application development vendors. Consultancy, analyst or research firms made up an additional 14%, while the remaining fifth of respondents originated from a range of sources including more niched telecoms services, government agencies, education institutions and industrial end-users of IoT technology.

‍Key Take-Outs#1 Navigating the IoT landscape?

• Roughly four in five respondents believe there is a lack of consensus over the best way to strategise, deploy and monetise IoT.
• More than half the audience says IoT and M2M have now come to mean the same thing.
• IoT services will be responsible for up to 50% of business revenue by 2020, according to half the audience.
• In the next 12 months, just under half of our respondents expect to generate between zero and 10% of their revenues from IoT. Elsewhere, less than one fifth expects IoT to generate 10-30% of revenues, less than one tenth says up to 50%, and less than 5% expect to be able to attribute IoT with more than half of their total revenues in the next year.
• By 2020, however, more than half of all respondents expect IoT to be responsible for somewhere between 10% and 50% of their total business, while 17% believe it will be 10% or less. A further 16% say more than half of their business will be directly concerned with IoT, and 15% opted against mustering a best-guess effort.

#2 Cloud platforms for IoT

• 49% of respondents say data analytics is the most important feature of an IoT platform.
• IoT services will mostly be built in-house instead of outsourced to third-party vendors, according to 70% of the audience.
• Two thirds of respondents believe 5G will be the main connectivity platform for IoT, when it arrives.

#3 Optimising IoT connectivity

• More than half the audience plans on using their existing radio network for both people and machine-based communications.
• Nearly 90% of respondents see permanent roaming as a major challenge for businesses providing IoT services.
• The radio network will carry up to 50% of IoT traffic in the future, according to nearly two thirds of the audience.

#4 Securing the IoT

• Nearly two thirds of respondents believe IoT will present new and unique information security challenges.
• An additional two thirds think IoT is more vulnerable to security leaks due to the volume of devices and traffic being generated.
• One in three respondents think they don’t experience any DDoS attacks.

#5 Industrial IoT

• Nearly half the audience says professional enterprise services and analytics software will be the biggest revenue generator for industrial IoT.
• 81% believe telecoms operators will face threats from new market entrants as a result of IoT pervasion.
• Just over a quarter of respondents feel conflicting standards will inhibit industrial IoT’s potential.

#6 Consumer IoT

• Nearly two thirds of the audience believe consumer-related products will be a major element of their IoT strategy.
• Just 7% of respondents think wearable tech will really take off.
• A completely driverless experience will be the biggest benefit of connected cars, according to 27% of the audience.

Telecoms.com IoT Outlook Report 2016 Telecoms.com Intelligence, analyses and presents the findings of an in-depth questionnaire answered by 900 members of the telecoms industry involved with IoT today.