Survey on the Internet of Things: Growth stagnates

The proportion of companies that have implemented IoT projects has hardly changed compared to the previous year and remains at around 50%. This is the conclusion of the IDG survey “Internet of Things 2022”, published by the specialist magazines CIO and Computerwoche. According to the study, 14% of companies have already implemented their first IoT projects (previous year: 18%), 17% report several IoT use cases (previous year: 16%), and 9% have implemented a very large number of use cases (previous year: 13%). One possible explanation for the stagnation: companies struggling with the consequences of the Corona pandemic are postponing the start of their IoT projects.

What is your use case for the Internet of Things?

Small and medium-sized companies catching up

It is striking that large companies have now almost lost their lead in the Internet of Things, which they have been able to maintain consistently over small and medium-sized enterprises in recent years. In terms of implemented IoT projects, they are now only one to two percentage points ahead on average, whereas in earlier years the lead was at least five percentage points. Only in the comprehensive roll-out of IoT projects that are planned or implemented have companies with more than 1,000 employees retained their slightly larger lead (13% vs. 9% and 8% respectively). Significant growth can be seen here in general: One in ten companies has now planned or implemented a comprehensive roll-out (previous year: 4%).

Investment in IoT declines slightly

Companies are still willing to invest in the Internet of Things, but this has declined slightly compared with the previous year. 55% of the companies surveyed state that they are investing to a strong or very strong extent in IoT projects. This represents a decrease of 2% compared to the previous year. The main drivers of investment are currently small companies, where the proportion of high and very high investments has risen from 44% to 54%. Large and medium-sized companies are currently acting more cautiously. Their share of high and very high investments has fallen from 66% and 63% to 58% and 53% respectively.

In the Corona pandemic, 30% of companies increased their investments in IoT projects (previous year: 42%). IoT budgets were frozen at 29% (previous year: 6%), and 15% cut their investments due to Covid-19 (previous year: 27%). Companies are currently investing most heavily in cloud services (46%) and artificial intelligence (35%). IoT connectivity/network technologies make it to third place with an increase from 27% to 35%. Investments in security technologies also increased (from 21% to 26%), while they declined in the area of analytics/Big Data (from 35% to 27%).

High satisfaction with IoT projects

12% of companies were unable to identify any added value, such as higher productivity or lower costs, in their IoT projects. The success rate has thus decreased compared to the previous year. However, 90% of the companies are very satisfied or rather satisfied with the results of their IoT projects, while 10% are not satisfied or rather not satisfied. The companies primarily define cost reductions (49%), increasing sales (46%) and productivity increases (43%) as criteria for success. They are followed by parameters such as higher customer/partner/employee satisfaction, reduced downtime/increased utilization, ROI considerations, and better production/supply chain insights.

Broad spectrum of use cases

Where exactly does the Internet of Things come into play? In general, the spectrum of use cases is quite diverse. The most common use case cited by companies in the current study was quality control (50%). The second most common scenario is networked production, while logistics, smart connected products, predictive maintenance and the establishment of a smart supply chain were cited as other use cases. In addition, companies are also using the Internet of Things to improve service quality as well as for building management, sales control and customer loyalty.