You’ve probably heard a lot about the Internet of Things (or IoT, for short) and wondered what it is exactly or whether it’s just another glossy-sounding fad. Let’s make one thing clear from the start – IoT is no fad.
We are already seeing it making a mark on our lives, especially in terms of what we can now do from our smartphones. At the start of 2017, there were already 400 million IoT devices with mobile connections. In the next five years, this figure is projected to top 1.5 billion.
You might not realise it, but you’ve probably reaped the benefits of IoT already from using your smartphone. Think about the last time you performed an online check-in for a flight – did you ask for your boarding card to be sent to your phone in PDF format to be scanned at various checkpoints in the airport?
IoT also manifests itself in sending SMS travel tickets. Some coach operators will send an SMS to your phone which you can use as the ticket for travelling, saving you the need to print a physical ticket or fumble around with coins and notes for the driver.
Mobile travel ticketing is only the tip of the IoT iceberg. The technology could make services like Uber and JustEat incredibly quick and convenient by logging your most requested destinations or orders and pre-loading these for you, saving the need to manually input these.
Another development which looks set to take off over the next few months is near-field communication payments, which would involve using your smartphone to connect with payment terminals so that transactions can be completed without the need to queue at a checkout.
You can read about these, and other, IoT developments on the mobile experience in the infographic below, which was created by Neon SMS.
See Full Infographics here.