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IoT Hype Might Have Suddenly Arrived to an End, New Study Showed

Vendors and users have predicted that nothing can stop the growth of IoT (Internet of Things), but new reports say otherwise. The Internet of Things (IoT) has been sharply rising for a while now, but the analyses of it show that its backlash is almost here. GlobalData conducted the study mentioned above which shows that venture capital funding and mergers & acquisitions activity have been suffering oscillating fortunes from 2014 to 2018.

Venture Capital (VC) funding in IoT space decreased in 2017 in terms of value, although it was achieving growth in previous years, 2015 and 2016. The deal value listed a growth of 8.3% in 2018 again, in spite of its loss in volume. In general, VC deal value increased by 10.4% at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR). Even so, deal volume decreased at a CAGR of 9.9% from 2014 to 2018, implying a growing average deal size.

Both U.S. and Chinese companies accounted for two positions each of the top five VC funded companies during the inspected period. The U.S. based firms named Magic Leap and Carbon3D both raised $2.8 billion, and the Chinese ones, namely Xiaomi and Horizon Robotics justified for an entire disclosed funding value of $1.2 billion. A Swedish company, Spotify, made it to the top five as well, having a total published funding value of $526 million.

IoT (Internet of Things) might come to an end even before starting, due to lack of investors

Several projects collapse and failure in the last years have made the investors cautious amidst the idealism for IoT technology and its application across distinct areas, Aurojyoti Bose, Financial Deals Analyst at GlobalData​ have reportedly said.

So, what diminished the hype around IoT are the project failures and the security concerns, as shown in the declining VC deal volume between 2017-2018. Still, the rise in deal value but the decline in volume indicates the fact that investors are in search of safe bets and favor investing only in minor but promising companies, Bose added.

While this may be true, M&A volume rose at a CAGR of 5.1% in the reviewed period, with an expansion staying true across all the years, except for 2017. In the meantime, M&A deal value decreased at a CAGR of 38.6% during the analyze. The high M&A deal value in 2014 and 2015 was principal because of big-ticket purchases like the $37 billion acquisition of Broadcom Corporation by Avago Technologies, $16.7 billion purchase of Altera Corporation by Intel, and Google’s $3.2 billion acquisition of Nest Labs.

The U.S. accounted for the dominant share in M&A deals with more than 50% contribution of deal volume and about 75% share in the total revealed deal value, during years 2014 and 2018, followed by China, UK, and France.

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News Tech

Internet of Things to Eliminate Wastage Worldwide

According to a report, there’s been an increase in rain in the Western Cape, which is the province where the country’s water misfortunes happen a lot. As per some scientists, there is a cyclic pattern that repeats every 220 years of 10 dry years. Currently, we are in the 7th year of this cycle.

This has a huge impact, and it shows that the drought faces parts of the Northern Cape, Eastern Cape, North West, and Free State, and it also has water restrictions in other provinces. The very high price of living is putting the South African households under a lot of pressure to save as much money as they can.

IoT (the Internet of Things) allows companies, body corporates, facility managers, municipalities and individual consumers to screen their consumption of water and detect the leaks before they get to the point where they need to pay a lot of money. It gives them real-time visibility of their water usage, as well, so they can change how much water they’re using before they have to pay the money.

The sustainability of the water resources in South Africa has become everyone’s problem, as said by the Chief Strategy Officer at Ontec Systems, whose name is Dhasi Naidoo. There are many reasons why this problem is so important. So for those companies which use a lot of water, it’s crucial to have a near real-time view of their consumption situation, in case they need to lower the volume of water used in this economic climate.

Who should be responsible for monitoring water usage?

There’s also the promulgation of the Water Amendment By-Law in the Western Cape. From July 2018, that shows that the responsibility of monitoring water consumption stays on the body corporates and the managers of facilities.

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News Tech

Internet of Things Could Improve the Urban Life Quality in Smart Cities

Technology has evolved a lot and now, we cannot imagine our lives without the Internet. Tech geeks have put a lot of effort into developing new ways of connecting different devices. Their work gives us the possibility to control several gadgets and equipment from our house by performing one or two operations. Isn’t this amazing?

All this progress led to the development of the so-called Smart Cities. As you can imagine, the notion defines ”intelligent towns” which are powered and controlled mostly by modern technologies. According to the concept developers, all cities in the world should become ”smart” for improving their inhabitants’ living conditions, manage resources in a more efficient way and create a sustainable environment.

Internet of Things (IoT) can improve the quality of life in the city

  1. It eases traffic congestions

If crowded cities had intelligent traffic systems powered by IoT, people would gain over 60 hours/year. Now, they spend all this time stuck in traffic or looking for parking places;

  1. Better air quality

Modern technologies can help authorities analyze the air quality and take immediate actions when it can have a negative impact on the inhabitants’ health. The devices used for this might seem expensive, but the investment is totally worth it. They can discover and control many damaging factors, among which carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide.

  1. IoT can contribute to optimizing traffic flow;
  2. It makes the access to Government services a lot easier;
  3. It improves the quality of life for elderly people;
  4. It improves the quality of healthcare services.

IoT provides local authorities all the help they can get for improving their administration. Things are constantly improving in this area, but there are a lot of experts who could explain the IoT benefits. Further research will contribute to turning more and more towns into ”smart cities”.

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Crypto News

China Plans To Lead IoT And Blockchain Technology Standardization

China will lead an international research group to standardize the Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain technology, the local news portal Science and Technology Daily reported recently.

The joint technical committee, consisting of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), adopted the proposal to form this international research group after a one-month discussion of the committee members.

China promotes the industrialization of IoT and blockchain

Science and Technology Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, writes that the creation of this group means that China has gained “discourse power” over blockchain technology integration.

It is of great importance for China’s industries, which are linked to leading global development and promoting the integration of Fiat and the digital economy.

The international research group chaired by Dr. Shen Jie will promote fiat digital integration by providing a variety of industrial application scenarios and developing a mechanism to promote the international standardization of IoT and blockchain technologies.

The new group will be made of analysts of ten countries, such as the US, the UK, and Germany, among others

China has recently made progress in the acceptance of blockchain technology. Last month, the Digital Currency Research Lab of the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) filed a patent for a digital wallet that would allow users to track their transaction history. Also in June PBoC unveiled a blockchain-operated system for digitizing paper cheques.

Earlier this week, as reported by Cointelegraph, the deputy director of the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) had called on the country to “unite” its forces to promote the Blockchain as the “core” technology for the new digital economy.

The new research group will consist of experts from over ten countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France.

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Crypto News Tech

IOTA To Revolutionize The Internet Of Things With LiFi Technology For Lightning Speed

The IOTA is disclosing more details on its approach to powering the Internet of Things at lightning speed with its LiFi technology.

More than 26 billion devices will be linked to the Internet by 2020, says the research firm Gartner. That paves the way for a whole new dimension of digital intelligence, where you can transfer massive volumes of data from one device to another with no human-to-human or human-to-computer interactions. That may well dramatically impact the way we live, building smart cities and reshaping virtually all industries, from the producing industries and agriculture to supply chain management and healthcare.

IOTA is attempting to leverage its distributed general ledger technology to power the revolution of the Internet of Things and link billions of devices together and surmount a significant bottleneck, namely, the bandwidth.

Currently, the more devices are connected, the more limitations occur. On WiFi networks, for example, only three channels can operate concurrently without a glitch.

IOTA works on LiFi technology to power the Internet of Things at lightning speed

To tackle the bandwidth bottleneck, IOTA is currently investigating the full capabilities of LiFi, a relatively new technology that makes use of the light spectrum and generates infinite channels.

LiFi is a technology developed to harness existing LED technology to transmit data at lightning speed.

Bandwidth is undoubtedly the last bottleneck. I can’t do anything about the speed of light. But the theoretical limits of LiFi are in terabytes per microsecond in the magnitude range.

IOTA Ecosystem Fund Director John Licciardello, on Reddit

On Discord, according to Hello IOTA, an IOTA code developer also debated the advancements LiFi could bring to the Internet of Things. On the other hand, the IOTA founder David Sonstebo also talked about the LiFi technology on Twitter.

No, we always stress that the speed of LIGHT cannot be exceeded. The coordinator is not part of the IOTA protocol, it is an integration tool.

David Sonstebo, on Twitter

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