Purdy - IoT Insights 2020

By presenting my weekly IoT Insights newsletter columns in chronological order, this book provides an unexpected and fascinating backstory to the role the mobile and wireless industry played in the Corona-19 pandemic. See how the tone shifted from blissful optimism as the year began, to awareness, full impact, response, and adaptation.

The pandemic is referenced in about 20 of the columns. Here are some of the most notable, so you can check them out yourself.

[week 1-2020 Mobile, Wireless and IoT Outlook] My first column of 2020 kicked off the year with the prediction that Theres no doubt that 2020 is going to be a banner year in mobile, wireless and IoT. Of course, that turned out to be truebut in a way that no one expected.

[week 12-Coronavirus and Mobile] Januarys bullish confidence gives way to the first signs of trouble in Asia in Marchstill without much sense of what is coming. Mobile devices could help track and reduce the spread of the Covid-19 virus although a number of the methods would definitely invade the subscribers privacy.

[week 23- Covid-19 and Mobile] By June the full impact of economic shutdown and social lockdown was upon us. Working from home and remote teaching will likely cause a spike in the sales of laptops, tablets, accessories and software. Perhaps the bigger issue is how this pandemic will permanently change the way we live, work and interact with others.

[week 39-Apple, Nvidia and Ericsson] By September, we were seeing the pandemics impact on the mobile industry. Covid-19 caused delays in finalizing plans for the iPhone 12.

[week 50-Zooming In While Zooming Out] And by December, I discuss one of the most significant ways we were adapting to the new normal. Have you Zoomed lately? This seems part of our culture now due to the pandemic.

Whats fascinating too, is how the columns reveal the role that the mobile and wireless industry playedand is still playing into 2021in saving lives, and enabling the transition to Working from Home (WFH). Without mobile and wireless, the year 2020 would have been much darker, the damage deeper, and the road to recovery much longer.

Read, and enjoy.

T heres no doubt that 2020 is going to be a banner year in mobile, wireless and IoT with the roll out of both 5G and Wi-Fi 6. In this issue, I also cover wearables, smart homes, security, robots, mobile devices, IoT, foldables and AI/ML. I also point out that eSIM will finally begin to take hold and provide users with amazing new services without having to deal with physical SIM cards any longer. Welcome to 2020!

As the new decade starts (or some believe an old decade ends), I wanted to point out some of the more important trends that will shape mobile, wireless and IoT during the next year. Im happy to do a deeper drill down on any of these topics under a custom consulting arrangement.

5G

As I pointed out last year, we are living through the trough of disillusionment with the development of 5G. Yes, all the major US wireless operators have some 5G implemented, we wont see the full range of 5G services implemented for another year. I also pointed out that this was an excellent time for investors to invest in 5G products and services since they will be able to enjoy the ride to increased valuations as 5G rollout accelerates.

Friends are already asking me when they should buy a 5G smartphone. If you must buy a new phone this year, then get one that is 5G (likely Android until next fall when Apple should release one or more 5G iPhone models). Yes, 5G will enable all your apps and services to run much faster. However, I anticipate that new products and services will do things with 5G that couldnt have been considered today.

Wearables

Both the Apple Watch and the Air Pods have helped consumers understand the benefits of wearable devices and services. However, in 2020 well see several new products and services that will further expand the wearables category but will also help build the legitimacy of the entire wearable category. Thus, the outlook here is to see a number of new products and services introduced in the wearables category. One example: watch for the further integration of the hearing aid and the Air Pod.

Smart Homes

The smart home might not appear to be a mobile/IoT category, but if you look closely at whats going on, there is a lot of both mobile and IoT driving the Smart Home category. The recent announcement of the major vendors working together to provide seamless integration of smart home products is a good example: most of the technology is related to IoT. Hopefully by the end of 2020, youll be able to buy a smart home product and simply turn it on. It will self-register into the home IoT network and be able to provide many benefits without worry or concern over security or integration. Yes, theres till work to be done to make sure that smart speakers dont invade our privacy, but smart speakers are going to become more of a hub for a wide range of services.

Security

Security in mobile and IoT seems to be a hot topic because with so many new products and services coming to market, they all require attention to security. No one wants to hear that their entire in-home or in-office IoT network has been hijacked. There are new paradigms like using tokenization that will likely help. This is a constant battle between the black hat attackers and those white hat folks trying to foil invasions and ransom attacks. I honestly believe well make some good progress in mobile/IoT security this year.

Robots

Heres another category that may not seem having too much to do with mobile other than robots move. But, again, there is a lot of mobile, wireless and IoT technology in both industrial as well as consumer robots, and with 5G and

Mobile

Mobile has now become a wide range products and services from laptops to tablets to smartphones, smart watches and apps and services galore. And, just when you thought the PC (or Mac) was dead, the industry seems poised for growth again. Why? Due to so many advanced technologies including Flash solid state storage (privacy has come way down and performance way up), multi-core processors, software that integrates and makes apps interoperable with the smartphone. I recently purchased a new Dell Inspiron at Costco for $899 that had Intels fastest processor, 16GB of memory and 512GB of storage. It feels like it operates 10x faster than my previous Dell laptop. One big benefit is utilizing Smart Sync storage management from Dropbox. It only uses the laptop storage for the files I have open. If I open one that it only in the Dropbox Cloud, it just brings into local storage whats needed.