Clearly the future of the Internet of Things (IoT) is bright if this survey results are an indication. The study – State of IoT, Global Study – by global software company Progress in conjunction with Harbor Research, has established that an impressive 65 percent of IoT apps in production today were generating real revenue.
The study also revealed that developers expected this figure to rise to 80 percent by 2018. The industries that currently lead in IoT development included smart homes, wearables, automotive and sports/fitness.
Progress said in a press release that the survey, which took place between January and February 2015, had solicited responses from 675 application developers polled from the United States, The United Kingdom, Germany, France, Sweden, The Netherlands and India.
Of those surveyed, 45 percent were developing IoT apps. Developers based in the US were making the highest number of IoT apps (58 percent), followed by The Netherlands (50 percent) and Germany (43 percent).
When asked which industries were key to IoT apps development, research respondents cited smart homes (19 percent), wearables (13 percent), automotive (11 percent) and sports/fitness (11 percent) as the primary markets. They also named these industries as having the highest IoT app revenue today.
A shift is predicted in the next three to five years, with app developers expecting healthcare (14 percent), smart city (13 percent) and automotive (12 percent) as the top three industries for IoT app development and revenue generation. Public sector also rises to match today’s popular wearables market (both 8 percent).
Technology and Language Preferences
Developers cited Android as the best operating system (OS) for building apps for IoT devices (29 percent), followed by Windows (24 percent), Linux (21 percent) and iOS (16 percent).
Java proved the most popular platform/language used to collect and integrate data from the server side (55 percent), followed by PHP (17 percent) and Node.js (12 percent). Of the total respondents, 40 percent always or usually use a Rapid Application Development (RAD) tool to build apps, rather than building from scratch— a significant shift from traditional development approaches.
“Our research shows developers put their long-term bet on industry and infrastructure IoT apps as the foundation for revenue generation. They just need the right technology tools to gather, analyze, use and manage contextual IoT data to maximise this opportunity, from both a creative and revenue perspective. With the right approach, developers can turn their big ideas into business reality, helping define the IoT and its future,” said Mark Armstrong, Vice President and Managing Director EMEA at Progress.
Challenges before IoT developers
Developers around the globe agreed security and personal privacy, data privacy and protection from malicious attack, and general integration and data management were the top challenges in designing, deploying and engaging customers with IoT apps. They also confirmed these are the biggest challenges in monetising IoT apps.
While 77 percent of respondents considered the IoT opportunity exciting, many still felt they were lacking the necessary technology, skills or tools:
- 50 percent of developers didn’t have or were unsure if they had the necessary technology today to deliver on IoT expectations
- 50 percent of developers were unsure or definitely didn’t have the necessary skills and resources today to deliver on IoT expectations
- 45 percent did not feel they have the technology tools to gather, analyse and used contextual data from sensors
- 30 percent experience data overload and felt overwhelmed trying to manage it all when managing data sets for contextualized IoT apps, for example, location-based
Image Credit: Progress
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