A report on IoT spending by market researcher IDC has found the Asia/Pacific region (excluding Japan) will be the global leader for IoT spending (Internet of Things) this year.
IDC estimates that Asia-Pacific countries, which include Australia, will account for around 36.9 percent of worldwide spending on IoT in 2019, followed by the US and Western Europe each with 26.1 percent.
Not surprisingly, China was the top IoT spender in the region last year, with a total of US$159.1 billion, followed by South Korea and India with a spend of $22.6 billion and $19.6 billion respectively.
IoT services was the largest technology category last year, with $83.5 billion going toward traditional IT and installation services, as well as non-traditional device and operational services. Hardware spending was close behind at $78.4 billion, led by more than $65.7 billion in module/sensor purchases.
IoT software spending totalled $43.3 billion in 2018 and IDC says it will see the fastest growth over the next five years with a growth rate of 15.8 percent. The report says services spending will also grow faster than overall IoT spending, growing around 13.3 percent.
South Korea is forecast to be the top country in the region in terms of per capita IoT spending, followed by Australia and New Zealand.
The key drivers of IoT penetration include proliferation of cloud-based back-end services for data acquisition and analytics, and 5G fixed-wireless deployments all expected in Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines before 2020, IDC says.
