On the Internet of Things, only an iota of progress

In an earlier column this month we had looked at the telecom landscape and predicted the Internet of Things (IoT) will take off in a big way, and that this has to do with how 5G is weaving its way through the country. Soon after, Raman RV, a Bengaluru-based technology veteran called to say, “There is too much hype around IoT by technology analysts. Most of it is rubbish and they use jargon people cannot understand.” Raman who has witnessed the IoT ecosystem from close quarters wanted to make the case that the narrative around IoT does not tell the full story. The market for IoT, he argued, has not taken off as it was expected to.
Raman should know what he’s talking about. People such as him are invested heavily in the IoT ecosystem and he is at work on an agri-tech start-up that is still in stealth mode and deploys IoT in a big way. What then is his problem with IoT’s progress?
IoT has always been around, he says, giving the example of how laptops that connect to smartphones, televisions to refrigerators, and wearables such as smartwatches and Bluetooth headsets—are all ‘IoT-enabled’. These devices are connected to the cloud, can process data in real time, and allow users to make data-driven decisions.
While these uses were obvious to those in technology a long while ago, the infrastructure didn’t fully exist. At one point there were at least 150 companies competing to grab a piece of the IoT market before it all started to collapse. Lowe’s Iris, a venture by the home improvement giant Lowe’s, for instance, initially showed promise in smart home management. However, in 2019, the project was discontinued. The primary reason cited was the challenge in developing a sustainable business model, a common hurdle in the IoT industry.
Fitness enthusiasts will remember Jawbone from a few years ago. Despite being a pioneer in wearable tech, the company faced liquidation in 2017. Intense market competition led to its downfall, illustrating the cutthroat nature of the tech industry. Then there was Revolv, another smart home automation hub that was acquired and then discontinued by Nest, a subsidiary of Google, in 2016. Such shutdowns left users holding obsolete devices.
While the numbers of companies in IoT go on and on, these examples paint a picture of the industry’s complexity with innovation, market forces, and financial viability intertwining and often leading to unpredictable outcomes.
This brings us to the fundamental question: Why did this happen? In the early days of IoT, well-funded entities such as Philips, where Raman used to work, had started work on unique and useful gadgets. As word spread, more companies got in with each trying to sell their own versions of smart gadgets. They built their own hardware and software and that was where the problem started. None of these smart devices could ‘talk’ to devices from other companies. Every entity was hoping the platform they were at work on would dominate the market. Those who had gotten into the space included big tech companies such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Cisco, and Oracle. From thereon it was a matter of time before the consumer got exasperated because technologically speaking, IoT devices were no longer inter-operable.
People started realizing that some of these gadgets, while smart on their own, couldn’t work together to make their life easier, which was the whole point.
But people like Raman are still hopeful that the IoT story can be milked in other ways. The agri-tech start-up he is working on with a former colleague has acquired a few hundred acres of land in Karnataka. They have deployed smart sensors and artificial intelligence to keep watch over the land and crops. The data it collects provides farming supervisors inputs on what to do and when without human intervention. Agriculture is a tough business and it needs the best inputs to scale up. What used to take a few decades, if done intelligently, can be done in a few years. That’s what they’re hoping to do thousands of acres across the country—without manual labour. God Speed!