1. The largest Internet of Things: Microsoft
Since the announcement of Azure IoT Suite on 20 15, Microsoft has become a major player in the field of IoT with its Azure cloud products and related IoT platform as a service.
20/kloc-in April, 2008, Microsoft doubled, and announced that it would further invest $5 billion in Internet of Things technology within four years. It is expected that most of these investments will flow into cloud services, Internet of Things operating systems and analytics. Following the announcement of services such as "Azure IoT edge" and "IoT central" on 20 17, two excellent IOT services announced by Microsoft on 20 18 are Azure Sphere and Azure Digital Twins. Azure Sphere is a highly secure end-to-end solution used by Microsoft to connect microcontroller power devices. Azure Digital Twins is a service that allows developers to build digital copies of physical assets, which is an important tool to expand the analysis and other elements of IOT solutions on thousands of devices.
2. Annual Consumer Internet of Things Story: Sonos IPO
In 20 18, another real success story appeared on Nasdaq: speaker manufacturer Sonos. Sonos was listed as 1 on August 20/8. After the company first introduced revolutionary wireless speakers at CES in 2004, it had 14 and $450 million. Sonos is one of the first entrants in the smart speaker market. It creates high-quality products that consumers love and always gets good comments. So far, the company has sold190,000 products. At present, there are more than 654.38 billion families in the world, and each family currently buys about 3 Sonos products on average. Sonos has not met more than 99% of the global market demand.
However, the stock price of Sonos after listing tells a different story. Since its initial public offering in August, 20 18, the stock has fallen by about 40%, fearing that large smart home giants may eventually stop cooperating with Sonos and replace the smart speaker market itself.
Another consumer Internet of Things IPO is at 20 18, and Arlo Technologies, a smart home camera manufacturer, is even worse when it is introduced into the open market. Since the initial public offering, the stock has fallen by about 50%.
Both companies hope to avoid becoming another Fitbit-one of the biggest failed IPOs in the history of the Internet of Things. Since the initial public offering in mid-20 16, Fitbit's share price has fallen by more than 70%, while Nasdaq index has risen by more than 30%.
3. The most discussed partner: Rockwell Automation -PTC
Rockwell Automation, an industrial automation giant, announced in June that it would invest $6,543.8 billion in the Internet of Things platform, PLM and PTC, a leader in CAD software. The industrial Internet of Things community has discussed this news a lot, because people have been thinking about how Rockwell will respond to the powerful Internet of Things platform promoted by its main competitor Siemens.
At the end of 20 18, Rockwell showed how the company now relies on PTC to provide components of the Internet of Things platform as part of the newly launched "PTC Supported Innovation Suite". Both companies hope to further build their software components into integrated industrial digital solutions.
4. The most controversial market: China.
Perhaps one of the most obvious signs that China came to power can be inferred from the failure of the Qualcomm-NXP merger. 20 16 10, Qualcomm, a chip manufacturer headquartered in the United States, announced that it had acquired NXP, the leading automotive chip maker of Lenovo, for US$ 4.4 billion, making it the biggest transaction in the history of the semiconductor industry. However, it didn't land in the end. Reason: China. The acquisition has been approved in eight jurisdictions, including the European Union and South Korea-but with the global trade dispute between the United States and China heating up in 20 18, China regulators did not approve the transaction.
There are also some global disputes with China Internet of Things companies. Most notably, some countries and telecom companies banned Huawei and ZTE.
At the same time, many companies hope to further strengthen their relations with China. For example, Intel, Siemens, Renesas and myDevices all cooperated with Alibaba Cloud to bring their products to China and carry out joint innovation projects. Microsoft has also expanded its cloud infrastructure in China, doubling the number of local Azure areas. The funds of China Internet of Things startups have also increased significantly.
5. The most embarrassing altar fall: General Electric
According to the Wall Street Journal on July 30th, 20 18, General Electric Company, the pioneer of Industrial Internet, is seeking to sell GE Digital and its Internet of Things platform Predix.
The news was released after a series of negative events that shocked the company in the past few months. This includes the layoffs of thousands of workers, the financial difficulties of its subsidiary GE Capital, and the decline of its stock from the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
Just two years ago, the company announced that Bear? This ambitious plan is to become a "software business worth $6543.8+$500 million" by 2020, including $4 billion sold by Predix alone.
20 18 12, GE management finally decided to find another way. ServiceMax, the field service management software sold by our company, holds most shares, but decided to give GE Digital (and its Predix) a brand-new independent entity. 20 19 will give us a deeper understanding of the details of this new entity and whether it can be separated from some negative reports received by GE in the past few years.
6. The most influential research report: Bain Company-Opening the Opportunities of Internet of Things
In August this year, Bain released a study called "Unleashing the Opportunities of the Internet of Things". This publication provides a comprehensive overview of the priorities, viewpoints and challenges of more than 600 Internet of Things end users and 180 Internet of Things suppliers. It also compared the survey results with similar surveys in 20 16. Among them, Bain found that:
Bain provided more insights in the follow-up webinar. These insights showed that compared with 20 16, the return on investment of industrial customers in the Internet of Things project was clearer, and "quality control" was marked as one of its key use cases by customers and suppliers.
7. The most important government measure: California Cyber Security Law.
After many failed attempts to submit the Internet of Things network security bill to the US Senate, California jumped from a building at the end of August 20 18, becoming the first state to pass the Internet of Things network security law.
Starting from June 5438+1 October1,2020, any equipment manufacturer "directly or indirectly" connected to the Internet must be equipped with "reasonable" security functions to prevent unauthorized access, modification or information disclosure.
Although many people admit that this law is a belated first step, most experts criticize it as too superficial and vague. For example, Ruth Artzi, senior product marketing manager of VDOO, an Internet of Things security company, wrote: "The legal requirement for unique passwords is a good progress, but unfortunately, it is not enough. [] The law should be defined in a more specific way, because according to the nature and function of equipment, the requirements of "appropriate" safety procedures are too vague, and there is no real mechanism to verify whether suppliers have taken appropriate measures.
8. The most important connection plan: 5G network
5G is one of the most discussed technical trends in 20 18, because it promises to change the speed and delay. 20 18 is also the year when the first 5G network was opened.
June 20 18 marks the initial completion of the 5G standard, although it is expected that some functional revisions will be made before March 20 19 or even later.
20 18 10, Verizon Communications became the first operator in the world to officially launch a 5G network in four American cities (Los Angeles, Houston, Indianapolis and Sacramento). Verizon now claims to be "5G first", although its competitors have built their networks based on proprietary 5G TF standards rather than the official 5G standards (standardized by 3GPP).
20 18 12, three operators in Korea started commercial 5G networks simultaneously. Unlike Verizon's 5G network, their network seems to be based on the 3GPP standard, and it also provides fixed wireless access services for corporate customers.
9. The biggest deal of M&A: IBM/Red Hat.
Internet of Things 20 18 has seen large-scale transactions related to the Internet of Things. IBM announced its intention to acquire Red Hat worth $3.4 billion, which is the biggest software transaction in history. The agreement promises that IBM will gain a better position in the cloud market that competitors AWS, Microsoft and Google have been leading. With Red Hat, IBM now has its own container solution, powerful cloud software stack and the ability to play a better role in hybrid cloud settings, allowing data transmission across multiple cloud environments. The analysis of the Internet of Things predicts that in the next few years, mixed and cloudy settings will play an increasingly important role in the data storage of the Internet of Things.
10. The largest financing: View
In addition to the above-mentioned trend of increasing end-user application funds based on the Internet of Things, the second trend is the sudden increase of domestic capital investment based on the Internet of Things. The total amount is about 1 100 million dollars-considering the financing enterprises in the early stage, this figure is quite high.
Conclusion: Silver also wishes you and your team success on 20 19!