Top IoT use cases & statistics for 2024
January 31, 2024
The Internet of Things (IoT) technology is a network of interconnected devices equipped with sensors and actuators that gather and exchange data with an analytical solution.
IoT systems help businesses improve operations and make more informed decisions and therefore are widely adopted across all industries. The use cases of IoT technology include but are not limited to, predictive maintenance, energy consumption management, smart homes, remote patient care, and fleet management.Â
Let’s examine major use cases of IoT implementation across multiple industries, as well as some real-life IoT applications, and get acquainted with the top IoT statistics for 2024.
Top IoT use cases across industries
Equipment predictive maintenance
 Industrial IoT solutions collect real-time data from equipment endpoints, helping monitor the machines’ condition and predict potential issues, thus giving the personnel time to prevent costly failures and downtimes.
When industrial IoT sensors are installed so densely they can gather information on everything inside a factory, manufacturers can create a virtual copy of their facility with the help of machine learning and cloud computing capabilities. Digital twins in manufacturing let engineers simulate production floor processes, conduct experiments, and discover issues or opportunities for product improvement without interfering with manufacturing processes.
Smart energy management
Plants can leverage the help of IoT-enabled smart meters connected to energy management systems. With such a system in place, they can streamline energy audits and detect and eliminate abnormally high energy consumption, thus saving considerable costs and ensuring energy efficiency.
Quality control
Manufacturers can use IoT sensors to track such metrics as temperature, humidity, or pressure to control the conditions of the manufacturing process and end-product quality. In addition, IoT sensors enable factories to make quality assurance more rigorous and conduct it at every step of product manufacturing instead of only at the final stage.
Remote patient monitoring & diagnostics
IoT sensors and wearables can track patient health conditions and alert doctors in cases of emergency, while AI recommendation engines can swiftly suggest suitable treatment methods. In addition, IoT-powered medical devices can help with remote diagnostics by providing a more complete picture of the patient’s condition.
Healthcare facility management
Hospitals can utilize IoT sensors and video surveillance to track hospital equipment, like dialysis stations, smart beds, or wheelchairs, as well as patient flow around the facility. IoT technology can also alert hospital administration on the availability of surgery theaters or treatment rooms and healthcare professionals.
Medication management
Medical devices with embedded IoT sensors can help manage drug intake by alerting patients when it’s time to take medicine or an injection. In addition, IoT can assist with monitoring medication doses of implantable devices, like insulin or other hormonal implants.
Automotive
Connected vehicles
IoT is the key enabler of connected vehicle technology, facilitating the interaction between cars and road infrastructure elements. Traffic lights, vehicles, RFID scanners, and pedestrian devices can all exchange data due to IoT technology, helping eliminate traffic congestion, improve road safety, and optimize car and road infrastructure energy usage.
Autonomous driving
Along with AI and computer vision, IoT is an integral element of autonomous vehicle technology. Currently, there are driver-assistance systems of various levels of automation, spanning from simply helping the driver with lane centering or cruise control to completely taking the driving over, with no human intervention needed.
Car predictive maintenance
IoT sensors installed across the vehicle can gather information about its health, including engine performance, fuel consumption, oil levels, and tire pressure. This allows for remote car diagnostics to detect and prevent potential mechanical issues, which saves maintenance costs, improves overall vehicle safety, and reduces downtime.
Oil & gas
Oil exploration
Connected IoT sensors collect seismic data and transmit it to geologists for further analysis to create an image of subsurface structures, detect hydrocarbon reservoirs, and decide on the most optimal drilling site, thus accelerating the exploration.
Pipeline management
IoT sensors can monitor pipeline corrosion and other issues, identifying and preventing problems before they occur and facilitating predictive maintenance of the pipeline's infrastructure. In addition, IoT sensors can help timely detect leaks and minimize pipeline downtime.
Smart tanks & pumping systems
IoT sensors help monitor the oil levels in a tank, helping employees to dispatch trucks only when it’s time to refill the reservoir. Moreover, IoT sensors can observe the pump's performance and alert the maintenance team of potential issues or hazards to avoid injuries and keep employees safe.
Network asset monitoring
Telecom companies can utilize IoT sensors to track their assets and network infrastructure health across various locations. Then, with the help of predictive analytics, they can identify a range of issues early on and ensure steady network performance.
Smart connectivity solutions
Telecom businesses can leverage IoT technology to offer businesses data analytics and management services, as well as deliver more affordable interconnected devices for connected cars and smart homes, factories, and cities.
Supply chain management
IoT sensors, like RFID and NFC tags, can track goods in real-time at the production line, during transportation, and in the store. IoT can prove especially beneficial for the delivery of perishable products, allowing retailers to monitor their location and temperature during transportation, get alerts in case of disruptions, and optimize delivery routes and conditions in real time.
Warehouse & stock inventory management
With the help of IoT sensors, retailers can forget about complicated manual inventory management processes. IoT automates retail warehouse management, remotely monitoring the inventory levels 24/7 and helping avoid overstock or stockout.
Marketing personalization
IoT solutions can gather customer data and analyze it to make the shopping experience more personalized, from modified store layouts in line with customer preferences to more personalized ads and marketing campaigns.
Self-checkout
With smart self-checkout solutions, customers no longer need to manually scan the products and use their credit cards. Advanced self-checkout systems in retail shops can automatically detect products in the shopping cart and charge customers’ mobile app accounts, minimizing long queues and improving the overall customer experience.
BFSI
Improved security
Banking and financial organizations can utilize IoT technologies, like smart security systems and CCTV cameras, to better protect their buildings and assets. For more sensitive facilities, security can be strengthened with IoT-based biometric attendance systems, with devices like face ID or fingerprint readers installed across certain organization floors to control access.
ATM monitoring
IoT technology can help banks monitor ATMs in multiple locations for malfunctions, possible tampering, or the need for replenishment, thus allocating human resources more effectively and servicing ATMs only when needed.
Logistics
Fleet management
With the help of IoT sensors, fleet managers can track vehicles' locations, speed, cargo weight, engine performance, and drivers’ health conditions and use this information to plan optimal routes and improve fleet operational efficiency.
Fleet predictive maintenance
IoT sensors embedded in fleet cars collect a wide range of vehicle data, including engine performance, driving patterns of each vehicle, braking conditions, and oil levels. Analyzing this information, companies can predict potential breakdowns and schedule fleet maintenance activities.
Warehouse inventory management
IoT technology, like RFID tags and sensors, is highly beneficial for smart warehousing, allowing logistics companies to maintain optimal stock levels, ensure safe storage of goods, and automate some manual data-related operations, thus reducing labor costs.
Drone-based delivery
Logistics companies can leverage drones connected to their IoT infrastructure to deliver perishable products or medication right to the customer’s doorstep.
Agriculture
Precision farming
Precision farming heavily relies on IoT-gathered data, such as temperature, humidity, pest infections, and overall soil condition, to make data-driven decisions on the optimal use of water, fertilizers, or pesticides, thus saving costs and making farming more efficient.
Livestock management
Farmers can utilize IoT sensors to track the real-time location and health conditions of their cattle. Based on the gathered data, advanced analytics solutions can detect possible health issues, illnesses, and reproduction cycles and alert farmers about them.
Smart cities
Smart parking
IoT sensors installed across the parking lot, along with GPS systems, can detect the nearest available parking spot and notify the driver via a mobile or in-car application. Gathered from across the city’s parking lots, such information helps the administration detect the most popular areas for parking and address the lack of parking places.
Utility management
Smart meters installed in residential areas across the city enable real-time monitoring of resources supply and demand and ensure accurate billing of gas, water, and power consumption. This way, smart utility management solutions provide consumers with better control of their bills and help utility companies better manage their resources.
Waste management
IoT sensors can monitor waste levels in trash cans around the city, replacing scheduled waste collection with on-demand ones. In addition, IoT helps truck drivers create optimal routes to collect garbage, making waste collection more fuel- and time-effective.
Public transportation
Municipalities can use IoT sensors to track public transport utilization patterns. Using IoT analytics, they can detect overloaded or underloaded bus or train routes and optimize the allocation of transport resources across the city.
Smart lighting
Smart lighting systems allow residents to control all lighting in the house with their smartphones. The system can also be tuned to automatically switch on the lights if someone is in the room, dim the lights if the TV is on, or turn down the lights if no one is at home.
HVAC control
Using thermostat sensors, smart heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems measure the air quality and temperature inside the house and automatically adjust the air to home residents' needs and preferences.
Improved safety & security
Homeowners can equip their houses with smart sensors that can detect water or gas leaks and automatically block the pipelines or open windows and doors. In addition, home residents can stay safe with the infrastructure of connected CCTV cameras monitoring the house and adjacent territory 24/7 and smart locks keeping track of all in and out movements.
Smart appliances
Home residents can interact with smart home appliances powered by IoT sensors and connected to the internet using their smartphones. Thus, IoT allows users to turn on the kettle remotely, check the products in the fridge, or set a timer for the oven.
Prominent real-life applications of IoT
Shopping with Amazon Go
Amazon owns 22 retail stores across the US that offer a ‘grab-and-go’ shopping model. Customers are supposed to enter the shop, put the goods in their bags, and simply walk out. The technology, powered by computer vision, deep learning, and IoT, will automatically add products to the customer’s virtual cart in the Amazon app and charge them as soon as they finish shopping and exit the store.
Drone-based delivery from Walmart
Walmart offers delivery by drone in a range of US cities, with the order promised to arrive within 30 minutes. As soon as a customer places an order, it is packed and attached to the drone. The drone uses a cable to safely deliver the order to the customer’s yard. It is important to note that certified pilots manage Walmart drones following FAA guidelines.
LG smart appliances
A renowned consumer electronics manufacturer, LG offers its customers numerous smart home devices controlled with a highly interactive LG ThinQ application and Alexa or Google Assistant. Refrigerators, laundry machines, air conditioners, and vacuum cleaners are all equipped with advanced features like voice control and machine learning capabilities enabling smart appliances to learn homeowners' habits and suggest recipes or cleaning modes.
Self-driving taxis by Waymo
In 2020, Waymo One launched the first in the world self-driving taxi without a safety driver in the front seat in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area, and later in 2022, the company expanded the service to certain areas of San Francisco. Driverless taxis offer greater privacy and allow passengers to listen to their favorite music or adjust the indoor temperature to their comfort. The technology behind self-driving capabilities is fuelled by LiDAR, cameras, and radar sensors, along with artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms.
Caterpillar MineStar
MineStar refers to a range of smart products from Caterpillar, a worldwide construction and mining equipment producer. Cat MineStar solutions allow mining corporations to automate operations, remotely control machinery, and gain instant insights into equipment health. MineStar technology also facilitates personnel safety with real-time operator visibility, incident reporting, and equipment location tracking.
Smart irrigation for Deep Sky Vineyard
Deep Sky, a vineyard based in the US, collaborated with a Google Cloud Technology Partner company to build an IoT platform for managing their vine harvest. IoT sensors collect data on water consumed by the vines in real time. Then, the Google Cloud Analytics platform analyzes the information and provides Deep Sky Vineyard with a clear view of its vineyard's microclimate. The platform can also send water requests to smart irrigation devices across the vineyard. This way, Deep Sky Vineyard can significantly optimize water consumption and prevent grapevine shriveling and bunch rot.
Self-checkout from Mashgin
A US startup Mashgin offers self-checkout solutions that require no barcodes or RFID. Instead, Mashgin self-checkout systems use cameras and computer vision to create 3D models of products and distinguish between them, providing for ten times faster product identification compared to traditional cashiers.
Eversense glucose monitoring system
Eversense offers a continuous glucose monitoring solution for people with Type 1 and 2 diabetes. The technology measures glucose levels every 5 minutes and transmits the data to the mobile application, where patients can monitor their glucose level trends. If blood sugar gets too high or too low, a user gets vibration alerts from the smart transmitter in the upper arm. This way, Eversense CGM makes the day-to-day lives of patients more comfortable and makes them more confident about their health.
Looking to adopt an IoT solution for your business?
IoT statistics for 2024 & beyond
IoT market state & growth trends by use cases
- Connected vehicles
- Consumer Internet & media devices
- IT infrastructure
- Office equipment
- Payment terminals
- Personal assistance robots
- Personal monitoring & tracking
- Portable information terminals
- White goods
- Asset tracking & monitoring
- Autonomous vehicles
- Inventory management & monitoring
- Precision specialist robots
- Real world "visualization"
- Portable information terminals
- Remote process control
- Smart grid
- Access control & intercoms
- Building automation
- CCTV
- Environmental monitoring
- HVAC
- Lighting
- Parking space monitoring
- Public information & advertising screens
- Road infrastructure monitoring & control
- Security & fire alarms
Scheme title: Internet of Things (IoT) annual revenue worldwide from 2023 to 2030, by use case (in billion U.S. dollars)
Data source: Statista.com
The growing number of IoT devices
Top IoT security issues
IoT security challenges
Insecure web, backend, API, cloud or mobile
interfaces
Lack of device software & firmware updates
Use of outdated software or device components
Insufficient privacy protection
Insecure data transmission & storage
Poor device management
Use of default settings
Poor physical protection of devices
Weak passwords
Insecure network connection
IoT economic value
$5,500 – $12,600bn
Grand total
Note: figures may not sum, because of rounding.
The geography of IoT adoption
Factors influencing IoT adoption
Tailwinds accelerating the adoption of IoT
Perceived value proposition
Based on successful real-life examples of IoT implementation, IoT adopters believe that the value provided by the IoT is worth the investment.
Technology performance
Recent technological advancements in IoT sensors’ accuracy, AI and ML, and AR/VR facilitate the emergence of more IoT use cases and enable smarter data-driven insights.
Connectivity
The arrival of 5G connection and improved network protocols provide companies with the required network capacity, speed, latency, or reliability, promising greater performance and security.
Headwinds complicating IoT adoption
Change management
Many organizations treat IoT implementation as an IT project instead of a company’s organizational and cultural transformation.
Interoperability
Despite significant tech advancement, current IoT systems are far from being a ubiquitous ecosystem. Many systems use different architectures and communication protocols, which makes it hard for them to freely exchange data.
Installation
As a rule, establishing secure connectivity and linking the existing IT ecosystem to the new IoT solution is complex and usually requires considerable time and money, which discourages companies from at-scale IoT adoption.
Cybersecurity
The growing number of endpoints significantly expands the attack surface and drives the need for strong cybersecurity protection at every level of the IoT ecosystem.
Talent
To implement, scale, and use IoT solutions, a team of qualified technical talent is a must, which might be a problem for many organizations.
Privacy & confidentiality
Fast and wide IoT adoption is halted by the need to safeguard confidential consumer IoT data, regulated by the Consumer Privacy Act in California and GDPR in Europe.
IoT implementation: 5 best practices
Integrating any IoT system into business processes requires a comprehensive strategy and a complex approach. Here are the top 5 best practices to help you successfully implement an IoT solution.
1 Set clear objectives
Adopting an IoT solution requires considerable time and money. So as not to waste money and allocate resources wisely, businesses should clearly define the goals and problems that the future IoT system will solve. These objectives should align with your industry domain, the size of your business, the amount of current operations automation, and future growth plans. For example, logistics companies can consider adopting an IoT solution to enhance fleet management and increase revenue, while healthcare organizations may implement IoT to provide better patient care and improve facility management.
2 Ensure interoperability & compatibility of IoT devices
IoT devices with multiple sensors are the primary points of contact with the target environment and gather critical data for future analysis. That is why, when installing IoT devices, ensure they are compatible with each other and the existing infrastructure to gather and transmit data seamlessly and without error. Interoperable devices should be able to communicate using APIs or protocols like MQTT, CoAP, or HTTP. Adopting a modern IoT platform can also facilitate device interoperability by serving as a mediator and translator between IoT devices' different protocols.
3 Select powerful IoT data analytics tools
IoT analytics tools are the brains of IoT solutions since they provide companies with meaningful insights into their business operations. Modern IoT analytics platforms, fuelled with ML and AI capabilities, can process data in near real-time, increasing the accuracy of data analysis and minimizing the possibility of human mistakes.
4 Don’t neglect security
Integrating an IoT solution into the company’s infrastructure significantly widens the organization’s threat surface. When an IoT environment isn’t properly secured, cybercriminals can access sensitive data or trade secrets and also utilize unprotected devices to tamper with other elements of the organization's infrastructure.
To ensure the safety of your business data, establish strong security policies that include measures for the physical protection of IoT devices, regular firmware and software updates, network protection mechanisms, access control, multi-factor authentication, proper management of legacy systems, and real-time security monitoring.
5 Adopt a consistent change management strategy
To ensure the success of your IoT implementation endeavor and make the adoption process smoother, prepare your team for future technological advancements by adopting a feasible change management strategy. You can communicate the importance of IoT for the organization by holding several meetings or seminars. Also, organize training sessions for those employees who will be involved in day-to-day interactions with the new solution. Finally, let employees share their feedback on the IoT system and how it can be improved.
Start your digital transformation with IoT
IoT is a fast-growing technology offering companies of all sizes transformational solutions. By taking a proper approach to IoT implementation and eliminating all potential obstacles, businesses can unlock the full potential of IoT solutions and benefit from real-time visibility, increased operational efficiency, reduced operating costs, and data-driven predictive and prescriptive insights. If you’re looking for a technology partner to bring your IoT solution to life, turn to Itransition experts for professional IoT implementation services.
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