IoT news of the week for June 2, 2023

The FTC fines Amazon over Ring and Alexa privacy violations: The Federal Trade Commission is gunning for Amazon with a $5.8 million fine for its Ring security business and a $25 million fine for Alexa. The FTC had filed a lawsuit against Ring over what it called deceptive trade practices surrounding Ring’s collection of facial data; Amazon settled that lawsuit and agreed to delete users’ facial data and the work product created from that data, which was collected before 2018. It was an interesting requirement, because if that data was used to train Ring’s algorithms for person detection or other computer vision algorithms, it’s unclear how to walk that back. The FTC also sued Amazon over Alexa collecting children’s voice data using the FTC Act and Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. Amazon settled that suit as well, and now must delete inactive children’s accounts, some voice recordings, and some geolocation information associated with children’s accounts. As with the other settlement, Amazon must not use that data to train its algorithms. After the General Data Privacy Regulations enacted by the EU, I was curious how stricter privacy rules would affect the development of AI algorithms because under those rules, consumers in the EU could demand the full deletion of their data and restrict its use. It seems that even in the U.S. companies may have to face a sort of privacy and AI reckoning. I’d love to know how Amazon handles the issue and how the FTC plans to oversee it. (CNBC)

LoRaWAN deployment in Northern Kenya is Africa’s largest: Several companies have teamed up with the Northern Rangelands Trust to build out a LoRaWAN network that lets rangers and conservationists track the environment and animals in 22 public and private parks in Northern Kenya. The project has already deployed 190 battery-powered sensors that share information using LoRaWAN, and there are plans for 250 more. Sensors are used to track rangers, wildlife (including rhinos), livestock, and environmental conditions. The data is used for protecting workers and wildlife while also trying to understand the effects of livestock grazing and climate change on the environment. Cisco and Actility are both involved in building and operating the network. (Actility)

This wearable is using a surprise style of energy harvesting: The Mother bracelet isn’t something I’d likely buy. It’s a crowdfunded campaign for a wearable activity tracker that measures sleep, steps, calories burned, heart rate, and body temperature. However, it has one novel feature that prompted this blurb: It is powered by harvesting the energy generated by temperature differentials and a solar cell. Solar-powered devices are everywhere, but using the differences in temperature to power a device is rarely seen on consumer products (they are available for industrial settings, especially for monitoring things like steam traps). It’s also an interesting way to power a wearable. The Mother bracelet doesn’t require charging, so I’m excited to play with it to see how the double dose of energy harvesting fares during real-world wear. I will admit that having a wearable that doesn’t need a charge would be great. (Indiegogo)

LPWAN chip company Semtech has a new CEO: Semtech has appointed Paul Pickle as CEO to replace Mohan Maheswaran, who announced his retirement in March. Pickle will also join the chipmaker’s board of directors. Semtech is the company behind LoRa chips, and has also been seen by many as a roadblock in terms of broader adoption of the technology. Semtech’s limited licensing and then its difficult-to-use software had led many companies to search for alternative Low-Power Wide-Area Networks. Last year, Semtech acquired the cellular modem business of Sierra Wireless, bringing in an additional form of wireless connectivity for customers. Prior to this role, Pickle was the CEO of Lantronix, an IoT services company, where he oversaw the tripling of revenue from the beginning of his tenure in 2019. (Semtech)

Honeywell launches a version of its plant management software for buildings: In line with other industrial giants launching software to help manage building operations and reduce their carbon impact, Honeywell has released a version of its Forge software for managing buildings. Honeywell Forge for Buildings combines hardware, software, and services to help building operators manage their physical systems such as access control, HVAC, and safety as well as track metrics such as occupancy. The software will work with hardware from other vendors, and will likely compete with similar products from Schneider Electric (EcoStruxure) and Johnson Controls (Metasys). (Honeywell)

IoT is growing, but not as fast as the market would like: This post contains a great insight from Transforma, which has calculated that we will see 34.4 billion IoT connections by 2032. But my favorite chart is the one that shows IoT adoption by enterprises growing at a gentle slope as opposed to exhibiting the “hockey-stick-like growth” that’s favored by anyone promoting their tech solutions and the venture capitalists that fund those companies. This meshes with my experience covering the industry for the last 10 years. While on the consumer side there was a rush to adopt a few select devices (smart thermostats and video doorbells), because they were adopted in such relatively small quantities compared to the overall connected device adoption their growth curves flattened when averaged into the total number of devices sold. Additionally, the largest IoT use cases are confined to the consumer market, where adoption will occur slowly as existing devices fail and get replaced with connected ones. The absolute largest number of IoT devices by 2032 will be electronic shelf labels, which are both cheap and have a clear return on investment for retailers. (Spiceworks)

Or maybe the number of IoT devices will only reach 33 billion by 2030: Everyone has a guess about where IoT device counts will be in the next few years. This time, Vodafone is estimating that there will be 33 billion connected devices by the end of the decade, which is pretty close to the estimates from Transforma. It’s a far cry from Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son’s estimates of 1 trillion IoT devices by 2035, which he made all the way back in 2015, so we’re likely closing in on better numbers as the years roll on. The Vodafone report also highlights an issue I have with the current state of the IoT, which is that most devices do not talk to each other, but keep their data siloed away in applications and dashboards. Until we get that true interconnectedness between devices, the number of devices will stay far below that trillion device estimate, mostly because to achieve such scale, we’d have to remove the middle manager layer of computers and people involved. We’ll get there, but it’s going to take a lot of work. (RCR Wireless)

NTT survey reveals that edge is hot, but concerns abound: NTT, an IT infrastructure firm, surveyed 600 enterprises and discovered that more than 88% of enterprises believe they will depend more on edge computing from third-party vendors over the next two years. The primary reasons companies will move to the edge include operational efficiency and security. You’d think that these companies would be most interested in building their own edge computing infrastructure to help address those concerns, but instead 90% are hoping to turn to a single provider to help them out. As a potential one-stop-shop for edge computing expertise and infrastructure, it’s clear that NTT will shout this data from the rooftops as it seeks to sell consulting and hardware to customers.  (NTT)