According to a new report, most organizations aren’t tracking their IoT assets, and cost was a key reason.
According to the 2020 State of IoT Asset Tracking Report from Helium, Digital Matter and Semtech, over half of respondents (52 %) reported having no tech-based asset tracking, despite the urgency and high demand to do so.
Of those not using or searching for tracking solutions, a quarter of them said they’re not seeking one because of cost.
The report compiled findings from a global survey of IoT decision-makers and analyzed asset-tracking demands, adoption rates, connectivity and hardware choices, deployment challenges, and more.
It found that nearly two-thirds (63%) of respondents are actively researching asset tracking solutions - a promising 14% increase compared to 2020. Of those without tracking solutions, 46% said they planned to address their asset-tracking use cases within the next three months and 91% planned to within a year.
Most of the organizations surveyed that employed IoT tracking solutions, did so for two reasons: preventing asset loss and theft (38%) and enhancing operational efficiency (37%). Of the respondents already implementing asset tracking solutions, most used cellular connectivity (40%) or low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) tech, such as LoRaWAN (29%).
Almost half (47%) of organizations reported wanting asset tracking solutions to address internal use, while 31% reported commercial customers as their primary targets.
Compared with 2019, LPWAN technology use more than doubled in 2020, jumping from 12% to 29 %. On the other hand, RFID use decreased from 28% in 2019 to 11% in 2020.
"Asset tracking is a very important vertical in the IoT market and Semtech continues to develop solutions that specifically addresses this industry. Semtech's LoRa devices key capabilities – flexible, easy-to-deploy – make it the ideal solutions for asset tracking," said Marc Pegulu, vice president of IoT product marketing in the Wireless Sensing Products Group.
Dal Gemmell, head of IoT product at Helium, said that based on inbound demand and outbound efforts, “asset tracking demand remains high, and yet legacy connectivity technologies continue to be costly and complex.”
