The impact of Covid-19 on the Internet of Things – now and beyond the Great Lockdown: Part 2 of 2



Covid-19 continues to have an unprecedented impact on our society and our economy.
In part 1 of our analysis on the “impact of Covid-19 on the Internet of Things” we highlighted how the crisis is causing companies to require more transparency, reduce Capex and reconsider supply chains. We also discussed how IoT applications like “Track & Trace”, “Remote Asset Access” and specific healthcare use cases benefit from these shifting needs during and after the crisis.
This article is part 2 of the blog series, and it focuses on the Covid-19 technology impact, security implications and the implications on people and partnerships

The impact of Covid-19 on technology in general
Before we look at the Covid-19 technology impact for IoT, we will first explore how Covid-19 is impacting technology in general.
1.      Ongoing projects are paused
The consensus opinion right now is that there is a general decline in technology budgets as many projects are put on hold or slowed down. Recent research by ETR suggests a 4% drop in budgets, although the data was assembled in the early days of the crisis.
There are two exceptions of projects that do not get paused:

Highly strategic initiatives
Projects involving technologies that are directly linked to COVID-19 (see next aspect)

2.      Some enterprise technologies take off

There is a notable ramp-up in technologies such as

Work-from-home infrastructure (e.g., laptops, screens, connectivity, etc.)
Collaboration tools (e.g., ideo conferencing, team chat, project planning, etc.)
Virtualization infrastructure (e.g., remote desktops)
VPN networking
Mobile devices
Security
Desktop support

Zoom has become the posterchild of the Covid-19 technology impact. Interest for the video conferencing solution is surging during the crisis. In March, Zoom reported 200 million daily users, up from 10 million in December 2019.
3.      Declining demand for new projects/devices/ services
The sales pipelines for firms around the world are drying up as companies become more cautious about procuring new services, starting new projects or buying IoT hardware.
IoT Analytics recently talked to several people on this topic:
A Business development manager at an online marketplace for enterprise consulting projects in Europe told us in April that “In the last weeks, we have seen a drop in ~50% of new projects being advertised on our portal.”
The Head of Business Development at a cellular IoT network provider said in the last March week that: “Our website traffic is down 20%, resulting in less conversions. Currently I expect March to reach to result in a sales decrease of ~13% compared to January.”
4.      Many digitalization initiatives get accelerated or intensified
There are strong indications that...

Top