Arm's IoT GM Assesses the Future of IoT
To pessimistic pundits, the Internet of Things has always been “next year’s” technology for a long time, while the most optimistic forecasters see incredible opportunity in the decade ahead. So, which is right?
There’s no doubt that the growth of the IoT has gotten bogged down in the past by several challenges: Lack of either standards that make scaling out your innovations costly and time-consuming or easy access to tools and methodologies that can speed your design to market. Add to that the solution fragmentation and the dizzying array of potential market applications and requirements for IoT platforms.
But I’m an optimist with a long history in IoT, and I believe the long arc of the IoT market potential has hit a tipping point. That’s thanks in large part to the emergence of key industry standards and initiatives designed to make the IoT developer’s job much more efficient and to minimize the development complexity that has slowed momentum.
Certainly within Arm, we believe in the astonishing potential of IoT applications to transform the world with untold amounts of new data captured on billions of edge devices that are used to transform business and society. It is a fast-growing innovation space in which only the human imagination, it seems, limits potential applications. This ever-evolving situation is both a blessing and a curse.
We wanted to see whether we were outliers in the IoT conversation and, perhaps more importantly, we wanted to understand the new challenges (the curses if you will) and opportunities (the blessings) that developers and engineers, start-ups, cloud-service providers and established OEMs face today. That’s why we fielded this survey in early 2023, engaging with more than 700 developers, managers and executives in the IoT space.
The take-aways were illuminating – and gratifying. Respondents told us that the IoT is necessary for them to compete in their markets but also an opportunity to grow in their markets.
What were the important criteria these decision makers used to develop products? Overwhelmingly they want to grow revenue from current products or services, generate new
revenue streams through new services and leverage more data faster to make better business decisions. Respondents told us that it’s very important that their technologies and products are built on the same CPU architecture; for industrial respondents, cost and efficiency were key factors in why they favor the same CPU architecture, while consumer electronics respondents want CPU architecture consistency to make software reuse much easier. The survey revealed challenges on a number of fronts. Among them:
Access to newest hardware and IoT technology.
Global supply chain and shipments challenges linger.
Product security, especially ensuring security from development to end-of-life.
Need for improved certification and standardization for security.
Complex software and product development cycles for consumer tech.
Need for high-level technical skills to develop IoT devices.
Arm has established a global technology reputation in IoT because our architecture and products enable cost- and energy-efficient compute that partners use to deliver solutions faster and scale them more quickly. Open software and tools makes using Arm technology easy and scalable for everyone from start-ups to established OEMs. It wasn’t too surprising, then, that respondents see Arm as a leader in IoT. In fact, a vast majority have heard the phrase “IoT runs on Arm” and believe that the future will be built on Arm technology.
At Arm, we’re committed to continuing to address the challenges we see in accelerating development and improving the efficiency and productivity of the IoT innovation ecosystem. This report touches on some of these in more detail and the solutions we’re setting out. While the survey revealed lots of positive feedback that showcases the strength of Arm and the Arm ecosystem, we will not ignore the newly emerging challenges. We're dedicated to support the continued growth of the IoT by addressing these.
I invite you to take some time to read through the results to discover how your colleagues’ beliefs align with yours.
This report presents the results of a survey Arm conducted to explore the challenges and opportunities facing the Internet of Things (IoT) industry. The survey was conducted in the spring of 2023 and included 586 respondents from across the globe. Most respondents served the following industries: consumer technology, data center/cloud, industrial, network infrastructure, retail and logistics, smart cities, and smart homes. The regional breakdown: Americas (51%), Asia-Pacific (APAC) (30%), Europe (13%), Middle East (4%), Africa (2%).
The majority (83%) of respondents were managers, directors, VPs, or C-level executives, and they represented a range of organizations, including silicon vendors, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), tool and software vendors, and cloud service providers. Approximately 75% of respondents were either OEMs or involved in the development of tools, software, and frameworks, and 88% used Arm technology.
