What can we expect from the IoT world in 2022? If the past two years taught us anything, it is that we cannot prepare for everything. But some trends and technologies can help guide our way. Consider how the rise of #AI has pointed to more intelligent IoT solutions--making the tools easier for everyone to use. This, in turn, could result in stronger regulations or efforts for trustworthy AI.

Obviously, the pandemic has changed every aspect of our lives: how we shop, work, or play. Now we expect shopping to be easier and faster. To ensure this, business owners keep their presence on various touchpoints thanks to headless commerce platforms. Thus, they upgrade their stores to prepare for rapid market changes. And those who are not ready to optimize their websites globally can create a PWA.

This time of year, it can seem like the world is swimming in predictions for the new year, and the Internet of Things (IoT) is no exception. In fact, in fast-evolving areas like IoT, multitudes of trends and opportunities and challenges are in play, making predictions ridiculously easy -- just about anything can happen, and probably will. So, my goal here is to identify a set of IoT predictions that are both likely to happen … and likely to have a significant impact on the development and implementation of the technology. According to IDC, the IoT is going to stay hot, with investment expected to top $1 trillion by 2020, just one year after 2019. That will help fund a 30 percent annual growth rate in cellular IoT connections until 2023, per Ericsson (as reported in Forbes), which I calculate to result in about 1.3 billion connections in 2019.

By 2020, the Internet of Things (IoT) is predicted to generate an additional $344B in revenues, as well as to drive $177B in cost reductions. IoT and smart devices are already increasing performance metrics of major US-based factories. They are in the hands of employees, covering routine management issues and boosting their productivity by 40-60% [1]. The following list of predictions (Figure 1) explores the state of IoT in 2019 and covering IoT impact on many aspects business and technology including Digital Transformation, Blockchain, AI, and 5G. By the end of this year there will be are around 3.6 billion devices that are actively connected to the Internet and used for daily tasks according to IT Pro [8].

I don't need to tell you that the IoT is growing at an exponential rate. Vehicles, wearable gadgets, RFID sensors and software are advancing past basic function and the network is growing to include even more advancements each day. I have more connected gadgets in my home this year than I did last and I'm sure I'm not alone. I'd also bet that these advancements will be even more commonplace in our homes, businesses and on the road in 2019. Let's take a look at five IoT predictions for the coming year and how we can anticipate their impact.

Commercial devices are rapidly evolving to be powerful enough to run full-fledged operating systems and complex algorithms. Edge Computing, which refers to the fact that part of the work happens right at the edge of the network where IoT connects the physical world to the Cloud, involves a great deal more than having computation and data processing on IoT devices. A fundamental aspect of this concept is the strong and seamless integration between IoT and the Cloud, bringing the physical and computation worlds closer together in a profound way. The next developmental wave of resource-efficient machine learning algorithms will advance the potential for Edge Devices to take over a growing percentage of computing requirements. Due to its ability to increase privacy and reduce latency, Edge Computing is expected to evolve greatly over the coming year.

As recently as 2014, 87 percent of consumers had never heard of the technology, according to Accenture. In 2016, and 19% of business and government professionals reported that they had never heard of the Internet of Things while 18% were only vaguely familiar with it, according to research from the Internet of Things Institute. Although the technology is getting the most traction in the industrial space, the most promising use cases for the technology are just starting to come to light. To get a sense of what to expect as we head into 2017, we spoke with Stanford lecturer and IoT author Timothy Chou, Ph.D.; Thulium.co IoT's impact will be felt in the marketing world, says Sandy Carter, CEO and founder of Silicon-Blitz, who was named a 2016 Forbes Digital Influencer. "Omnichannel has been a hot topic owing to its focus on a single face to the customer," Carter says. With IoT, presenting a single view of the data becomes easier whether you are a B2B or B2C company.

Editor's Note: With 2017 now upon us, RCR Wireless News has gathered predictions from across the mobile telecommunications space on what they expect to see in the new year. There's no doubt that the "internet of things" has immense potential for business impact, but customers and end users need to get fully comfortable with the anticipated return on investment in order to move beyond maker projects and proof-of-concepts to real investment. Without understanding business value and potential ROI, IoT adoption will stifle and slow. There's a bit of a catch-22 in these early days because companies that have successfully deployed an IoT solution typically don't want to share metrics of their success with competitors. We're seeing progress on this front with more companies willing to document measurable gains in case studies, but it will also take time for the masses to trust that gains made elsewhere will translate to their organizations.