$2.5 billion to be spend on Internet of Things

IoT has making rapid advancements since a long time. This year an estimated $670 million were spent on it. Now, the retailers are further seeking to capitalise on this technology and spend an estimated $2.5 billion in its installation and hardware costs by 2020. This is almost a four times increase over this year’s investment. Radio Frequency ID (RFID) tags and Bluetooth beacons are included in the hardware list. The Bluetooth beacons will be used for enabling visibility as well as to push information to the smartphones and other devices of the users. On the other side, RFID tags will be used in real – time tracking of vehicles or people, thus cutting down labour costs. As per Juniper Research, the IoT is being used by the retailers for producing an ecosystem to gain advantage in market and harness the opportunity.

When consumer electronics are connected through RFIDs and Bluetooth beacons the user experience is greatly enhanced. The RFID asset tracking has many benefits to offer which are being utilized by retailers including Target and Zara. Since the last year beacon industry has seen great expansion as it offers a way to provide customers with information that is contextually relevant on their smartphones and wearables. The aim of IoT is to connect 38.5 billion units by 2020. As a consequence major changes will also have to be made in cyber security methods. Today’s cyber security is limited to access prevention but the spread of IoT will require figuring out ways to identify network breaches. If some suspicious activity is detected, those parts of the network should be shut off to prevent the attack from spreading. Juniper Research said that around 70 percent of the IoT units will be non – consumer devices. Concerning aims of different IoT projects and various business models, Juniper has forecasted that IoT opportunity might be worth $300 billion by 2020.

IoT consists of a network of physical objects such as consumer electronics, sensors etc. connected through Internet in a way that these things can be controlled and operated upon.