Roadmap for IoT strategy

Over the past few weeks, there have been several industry conferences, magazine articles and webinars dealing with the IoT market opportunity and the role of different companies across the eco-system. The topics addressed in these events have generally highlighted M2M use cases (vertical-specific applications) and the promising role for telecoms operators.

In many respects, the subjects under discussion have been disappointing. They indicate that many parts of the industry are still coming up the M2M learning curve and some way off dealing with the commercial implications of the IoT market. In terms of the competitive landscape that is forming around the IoT, company executives who are coming to terms with M2M are not yet in a position to plan sustainable IoT strategies.

So, how do you tell if your organization is working with an M2M mind-set and whether it has embarked on the transition from M2M to IoT?

Prices and Value of Consumer Data

The topic of personal data has interested me for a number of years because it is at the heart of new approaches to marketing and service development based on connected devices. I have written about the commercial potential of personal data from a business model perspective [1] for the GSM Association and introduced the concept of Stewardship and Platform Innovator strategies for companies in the mobile eco-system.

I was therefore pleased to see the Financial Times (FT) publish a series of articles on consumer data. Accompanying this series is an interactive calculator [2] that allows readers to determine a price for their personal data based on pricing benchmarks supplied by a data broker. After filling in the options for my own profile - in terms of demographics, family and health, property, activities of interest, and consumer behaviors - it appears that the price for my personal profile is about US$0.80.