IoT Survey: What are the main challenges, concerns and barriers of IoT?

As a continuation of the article “10 tips for successful IoT projects” and with the aim of powering the IoT revolution, Libelium has carried out a report on the main IoT challenges, concerns and barriers faced while developing technological projects related with the Internet of Things.

The survey was conducted for 12 weeks and has reached the participation of 637 experts from more than 250 companies and 5 continents, including Acciona, Amazon, BSH, Capgemini, Dell, Ericsson, HP or NEC, among others.

The report allows the identification of the profile of IoT professionals, their experience and their top demands developing projects such as the main difficulties to address.

Top 5 conclusions of the survey: What are the challenges of IoT?

The immaturity of the market is a reality

Less than 12% of participants are developing large projects and more than 23% are developing PoC’s and research projects. Three quarters have developed less than 5 IoT projects, which shows the immaturity of the market and the long development times. Not in vane, most of the projects developed by the participants have a duration between six months and one year.

Money is the main IoT dynamizer but investments are still limited

Cost saving and production improvement are the main motivations for IoT projects. Nevertheless, questioned about the project’s budget availability, around 63% of the IoT projects being developed nowadays have a budget under €100,000.

The importance of customization

More than half of the participants admit that the greatest demand resides in personalized projects, compared to 45% who opt for the integration of solutions already existing in the market.

Divergent connectivity, the main concern

Connectivity, integration of hardware devices, interoperability between platforms, security and total cost are the top five concerns in the development of IoT projects. In fact, almost 90% agree that choosing the right connectivity is one of the most difficult decisions to take. Wifi, Ethernet and Cellular protocols are preferred for IoT projects followed by LoRaWAN, the first LPWAN technology requested ahead of LTE-M, which confirms the reality of the immaturity of NB-IoT when bells are already ringing for the farther to come 5G. Additionally, almost a quarter of those surveyed do not know in depth what connectivity offer exists in the market and its differential value for each project.

There is still a long way to go

Despite all of the above, the IoT market still has some way to go because 8% of the companies surveyed do not yet consider investing in IoT technology. 12% say they have no experience with IoT but are looking for solutions or just learning and almost 20% do not consider the use of IoT data as a new business revenue. Really?

Download the report and discover what are the biggest challenges for IoT adoption:

Parameters to measure and devices to choose.
Accuracy vs durability.
Scalability.
The variety of software and cloud platforms.
Pre-defined budget vs budget flexibility.
Test before invest.
Public financial tools.
IoT workforce knowledge demand.

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