Trends 2016: Consumer, Industrial sector to drive IoT

By Somshubhro Pal Choudhury

Wearable IoT devices will continue the proliferation with more printed and flexible options. Smart watches, which until now were in premium category, would go mainstream.

Several trends will drive the semiconductor and electronics sector in 2016 and Wearable IoT devices will continue the proliferation with more printed and flexible options along with individualistic high-end accessories.

Smart watches, which had been only in the premium category to date, would go mainstream. A range of smart watches will be announced in the mid-segment, and these will replace the regular watches.

Virtual Reality and augmented reality will likely go more mainstream this year in events and as well as in gaming, taking advantage of the Microsoft’s Hololens and Facebook’s Occult.

Industrial

There will be more advancement of 3D printing technologies, prices dropping for 3D printers along with addition of different types of materials and use-cases.

The biggest shift in the ecosystem is with the emergence of IoT, the changing business models from CAPEX to OPEX, businesses moving more upstream providing a use-and-pay services model. We should see several live examples emerging.

Automotive

Even though driverless cars have created a lot of press lately, the mainstream would be Apple and Android ecosystem integrated cars. Most car companies have been working on CarPlay and Android Auto ecosystems only on the premium segment in 2015.

In 2016, even lower-end cars would have this de facto with an amalgamation of consumer lifestyle in home and in the car. There would be progress with Vehicle-to-Vehicle V2X networks with Department of Transportation giving a better direction of the implementation timeline from a safety standpoint.

Communication Industry

4G will go mainstream with much awaited rollout of Reliance Jio. Plugging holes in the network, massive data usage in hotspots will see the proliferation of small cells and Picocells to improve coverage and bandwidth.

There is a lot of discussion and talk about leveraging white spaces for un-licensed band IoT. We should see some region specific regulations on it.

In the above used cases, maximum traction will be seen in the consumer segment, which has been the earliest adopters of technology in the last decade and on the Industrial domain primarily because of the shift from CAPEX to OPEX with Internet enabled Things.

ESDM sector

2015 was a year with a lot of promise and expression of interest for ‘Make in India’ by several countries and companies around the world. Many companies have responded very positively to Modi's invitation with many of the local and foreign companies focusing their plans on manufacturing mobile phones.

The government has received over one lakh crore worth of proposals for electronics manufacturing under the modified special incentive package scheme (MSIPS).

In 2016, we expect the approved proposals to start breaking ground of the factories and hopefully more proposals will come in and get approved.

We believe the Fab would take a slight back seat as the pull would be more towards actual system OEMs and EMS vendors setting up which will eventually create pull towards semiconductor fab as the consumption goes up.

(The author, Somshubhro Pal Choudhury, is MD, Analog Devices, India)