2021 for the IoT market: The most important events
In 2021, many exciting events have taken place. Let's take a look at the most important of them.
The year began with the news of a reduction in car production due to a shortage of semiconductors. In one of our previous articles, we analyzed the main reasons that led to this. You can read it here: link. Initially affecting the automotive industry, the shortage has spread to other manufacturers of machinery and electronic components. Naturally, the IoT industry has also suffered. Many devices were not released on time due to delivery delays. Initially, it was assumed that the problem could be solved before the end of the year, but new variants of the coronavirus and a shortage of containers in China significantly moved these deadlines. Now, most experts agree that the deficit will continue into 2022.
Interesting news for the IoT market was the news of the purchase by Elon Musk's SpaceX company of Swarm Technologies, which specializes in satellite communications for IoT. In 2021, they successfully launched 120 small SpaceBEE satellites and plan to continue launching in 2022. This gives great prospects for the development of IoT and solves connectivity problems even in the most remote areas.
One of the most notable events in the field of Smart City was the announcement of the CTO of New York city about the launch of the program “The New York City Internet of Things Strategy”. The new strategy includes existing initiatives such as smart speed cameras, air quality monitoring, sensors in public transport. According to the documentation, new 5G networks, (NB)-IoT, LoRaWan will also be deployed, consultations and forums will be launched. At the end of 2021, several temperatures and humidity sensors were already installed as part of the program.
2021 also saw a lot of talk about AIoT. The AIoT playbook was released - a practical open-access guide for AIoT specialists. Specialists of such companies as Bosch, Udacity, Microsoft took part in its creation. By the way, Bosch in 2021 opened a semiconductor factory for the purpose of AIoT. An IoT Analytics market report estimates that the global industrial AIoT market will reach $102 billion by 2026.
Despite the obvious difficulties, this year turned out to be fruitful for the IoT sector. The market is steadily growing and an increasing number of companies are implementing IoT solutions. It is estimated to reach $1.39 trillion by 2026, according to Mordor Intelligence. We expect an increase in data security choices as we saw this year as one of the most vulnerable areas of many devices. In addition, the Braktooth vulnerabilities that we wrote about earlier, CCTV cameras of large factories and government scientific institutions were hacked. We hope in 2022 more and more companies will use IEC 62443 and IEC 303645 protocols to ensure the highest level of data security.