More than 85 percent of firms in Asia Pacific surveyed by Forrester Consulting believe that IoT will be the most strategic technology initiative for their organisation in a decade, higher than the global average of 80 percent.
The November 2014 study surveyed IT and business decision makers in nearly 600 global firms in the retail, consumer products, manufacturing, transportation, government, oil and gas, healthcare, and hospitality industries.
The survey was commissioned by Zebra Technologies and followed a similar study by the company in 2012.
“One of the data points showing the increase in IoT adoption over the past two years indicates that only 15 percent of surveyed firms had an IoT solution in place in 2012 – this has increased to 25 percent in 2014,” the company said.
“These firms look to IoT solutions as a way to address a variety of strategic, operational, and business challenges, Zebra Technologies said in a statement.
Zebra Technologies’ CEO, Anders Gustafsson, said: “I believe that with these survey results, it is clear that enterprises in key industries globally are adopting IoT solutions to arm themselves with the real-time data and intelligence to become smarter and more connected.
Other findings of the survey were that:
Nearly 65% of firms surveyed have deployed or are in the process of implementing IoT solutions;
There is strong IoT deployment momentum with over 70 percent of Asia Pacific firms having an IoT solution in place, or being in the process of implementing an IoT solution.
Singapore in particular shows a very high rate of adoption, with over 90 percent expected to have implemented IoT before the end of 2015;
New cities, buildings, and infrastructure in many Asia Pacific countries have enabled this strong adoption rate.
In comparison, 60 percent of North American, 52 percent of European and 71 percent of Latin American firms are in these same stages of IoT solution deployment.
Supply chain optimisation, visibility, loss prevention and cost efficiencies also were identified as top five benefits by between 44 percent and 46 percent of firms.
