IoT, 8 Key Internet Of Things Trends For 2019: AI, Smart City, Edge-Computing, Voice

The Internet of Things continues in delivering new opportunities for business and this is not going to stop in the next years. New or improved technologies will enable Digital Businesses, says Gartner (the world's leading research and advisory company).

These are some of the most influential trends for the next years and specifically for 2019 in the industry of things.

1) Voice-enabled assistants;

2) IoT empowered by Artificial Intelligence;

3) 5G Technology;

4) From the cloud to the edge computing;

5) New UX (User Experience);

6) Infonomics;

7) The use of Beacons;

8) Smart City Enablement.

1) Voice-enabled assistants

Voice-enabled assistants continue to see market growth. The technologies implementing this functionality (like Amazon's Echo Alexa or Google Home Assistant) are enabling the growth of smart home and smart industries market.  The application of this technology in the industry is reducing costs while improving the tracking process and implementing new hands-free control mechanisms. Moreover, the involvement of enterprise-ready wearable is solving many problems like the biometric authentication systems.

2) IoT empowered by Artificial Intelligence

IoT devices are allowing the enterprises to collect data on a scale never seen before. The application of artificial intelligence algorithms on the collected data is opening new scenarios for data analysis and interpretation. Think about how useful is the use of a facial recognition (computer vision) algorithm in the biometric authentications system, or the way an IoT connected assembly line can help a smart-industry in reducing the rate of manufacturing defects.

3) 5G Technology

Right now 5G remains a long distance objective, but the reduced latency introduced by the technology will enable a fast data transfer than ever. So all the applications needing faster communications will get many benefits from the integration of IoT devices and the new 5G connectivity.

4) From the cloud to the edge computing

Sometimes there are circumstances where the cloud is not a good and suitable solution because of the distance of the sensors or the reliability of the servers. In this scenario is evolving the possibility of implementing an edge machine able to analyze, collect and transform data coming from IoT devices and sensors making possible to reduce the traffic on the network and minimize the bandwidth costs. For this reason, many industry giants are making the effort of developing platforms ready for these circumstances, for example, Amazon that is building the AWS Greengrass Service.

5) New UX (User Experience)

The IoT is shaping a new user experience (UX) era driven by new sensors, algorithms, experience architectures and context, and socially aware experiences. For this reason, UX designers will need to adopt new paradigms excluding the use of screens and keyboards and relying mostly on IoT based UI like voice-controlled digital assistants.

6) Infonomics

By 2023, the buying and selling of IoT data will become an essential part of many IoT systems (Gartner).
Some surveys are showing how many IoT projects are selling or planning to sell data taken through their sensors and devices. Therefore, this real and consistent trend is surely not going to stop during the next years.

7) The use of Beacons

The beacons, used for some time to send targeted messages to users' smartphone, are now going down in their cost. So they are becoming really useful and applicable in the contexts where monitoring is essential because they permit to reduce the costs of management when compared to other old technologies used in recent years. A good application example could be to monitor doctors and nurses in a hospital, making sure they are following proper procedures or using the right medical equipment.

8) Smart City Enablement

Many cities around the world are developing new solutions based on the smart-city concept. Thanks to the use of smart-device, connected all around the city, it is becoming possible to monitor and analyze different parameters, such as traffic and temperature, better than ever before or to use smart lighting and smart meters to reduce the costs and improve the quality of life of the citizens. The applications are really a lot, and we are going to see an explosion of new ideas in the next years.