The IoT – chasing a public sector happy hunting-ground?

Tom Rebbeck, research director for the digital economy at Analysys Mason, indicated that the UK’s IoT market in particular had grown by a very respectable average of 13% over the last four years compared with overall economic growth rates of between 2-3%. As a result, the number of connected devices in the country had risen to 2.6 billion, making it a £60 billion or so business.

But he pointed out that so far the use cases for the technology have been neither “radical nor transformational”. While smart street lighting may have enabled one UK local council to halve its energy bill to £3 million, and manufacturers can now predict when component parts of their diggers are likely to go wrong, it is far from revolutionary stuff.