The long and winding road to IoT success: lessons from GE and Samsung

2018 was a year of change in the IoT platform space with new market entrants, M&A and pragmatic – if unorthodox – partnerships formed. GSMA Intelligence forecasts global IoT revenue to reach $1.1 trillion by 2025, primarily driven by the applications, platforms and services segment. This is, however, a highly competitive part of the value chain. In December 2018, announcements from GE and Samsung took the industry by surprise. GE spun off its IoT software platform (Predix) as a standalone company. Samsung closed its ARTIK platform after four years of operation. The moves reflect a previously overlooked challenge: scale alone is not a precursor to success. IoT is as much about customer education as it is technology. Companies across the spectrum of vendors are intensifying their customer development efforts.