The worldwide Internet of Things market is expected to expand at a CAGR of 8.8% from $4.8 trillion in 2012 to $7.3 trillion by 2017, according to IDC.
A new report from the research firm suggests that the greatest IoT opportunities initially lie in the consumer, discrete manufacturing, and government vertical industries.
"The IoT market must be understood in terms of vertical markets because the value of IoT is based on individual use cases across all markets," said Scott Tiazkun, senior research analyst at IDC's Global Technology and Industry Research Organization.
The report also shows that the IoT/M2M market is growing quickly, but the development of this market will not be consistent across all vertical markets. Industries that already "understand" IoT will see the most immediate growth, such as industrial production/automotive, transportation, and energy/utilities.
According to the report, the first step to understand how vendors can position themselves will be to understand the components of the IoT/M2M IT ecosphere.
Because this is a derivative market, there are many opportunities for vendors to offer parts or product suites that cover the needed IoT IT set. IDC said that there will also be impetus to offer vertical-focused solutions that make IoT tangible for both industries applications (M2M) and consumer needs (B2B2C).
“The IoT solutions space will expand exponentially and will offer every business endless IoT-focused solutions,” said Tiazkun. “The initial strategy of businesses should be to avoid choosing IoT-based solutions that will solve only immediate concerns and lack 'staying power.'”