IoT-Based Asset Tracking to Experience Significant Growth, Research Finds

Asset tracking is the new hot commodity in the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem, with a 51% growth rate year-on-year in device shipment until 2024 for this application segment.

The bulk of the IoT network of devices is invisible, doing the heavy lifting behind the scenes, even in industries that might not be the most obvious adopters at first sight. Asset tracking might not be glamorous, but it’s one area where IoT devices will be beneficial.

One factor that contributes to the growth of IoT in this industry is the expansion of low-power wide-area networks (LPWAN). Now that this technology is reaching maturity, companies can finally deploy them in low-value, high-volume markets. Until now, only high-value markets benefited from it.

“Hardware devices for the asset tracking market are primarily dominated by the need to balance power consumption, form factor, and device cost. Balance and compromise between these three must be achieved based on the use-case and are dictated by the business case and possible return on investment for the customer,” said Tancred Taylor, research analyst at ABI Research. “As these constraints are marginalized by greater volumes of adoption, by emerging technologies like eSIM or System-on-Chip, and by increasingly low-power components and connectivity, so too will the limitations on the business case.”

The early adopters of IoT devices were the fleet, container and logistics industries, offering basic location data and details on the conditions of assets in traffic. As the technology matured, more functions became available. Along with component miniaturization, IoT devices are becoming indispensable.

All of the progress registered in this IoT niche is leading towards a future where low-power devices can be attached to anything, limiting in-transit losses and ushering in a new way for the transportation industry to secure cargo.