Internet of Things Business Opportunities for Startups in 2024

First things first. we’re going to show you some statistical data to persuade you that the IoT is what you need, despite the fact that we are not aware of what is the niche of your business. Here are reasons why various businesses are adopting IoT technologies, and the future of the Internet of Things is very promising.

Internet of Things is nowadays implemented into over 200 widely-used applications in organizations, from startups with IoT small business ideas to large-scale companies with more sophisticated and complex solutions. Businesses integrating the Internet of Things into their solutions are far ahead of their competitors, providing customers with a great user experience. Many niches, namely Industry 4.0 (which implies fully automated production in which all processes are managed in real time and in response to changing external conditions), smart cities and homes, connected cars, and e-health, have advanced significantly by integrating the Internet of Things.

Also, this technology extends the functionality and product capabilities of many niches.As for 2021, the global IoT market profit is $212 billion. The number of businesses applying IoT technologies has advanced from 13% to about 25% within seven years. What’s more, the global number of IoT united gadgets is forecasted to reach 43 billion by 2023 and 75.44 billion by 2025.

Due to the comprehensive development and growth of global digitalization and the Internet of Things, the technology covers more and more niches and continues to progress actively. In practice, investment in this technology is projected to increase by 13.6% within 2022. Moreover, this statistic is driven by the introduction of new sensors, improved computing potency, and stable mobile connectivity. Sensor technology implemented into the IoT will decrease in cost, be more reliable, accessible, and enhanced. Linked to the app, such a solution will allow wide detection, tracking, and monitoring.

Applications applying real-time analytics and artificial intelligence are able to switch activity from local devices to cloud and edge computing solutions. Furthermore, advanced mobile connectivity accompanied by 5G will enable the integration of augmented and virtual reality technologies into apps.

The IoT techstack, which includes layers impacting market development, has evolved a lot over the past five years. Moreover, device-enablement platforms provide IoT growth while being in the growing stage themselves.

Internet of Things is nowadays implemented into over 200 widely-used applications in organizations, from IoT small business ideas to large-scale companies. Businesses integrating the Internet of Things into their solutions are far ahead of their competitors, providing customers with a great user experience. Many niches, namely Industry 4.0, smart cities and homes, connected cars, and e-health, have advanced significantly with the Internet of Things. Also, this technology extends the functionality and product capabilities of many niches. For instance, B2B marketplaces apply Industry 4.0 technologies to connect directly to their products in the field. Such permanent tracking enables predictive maintenance and enhances efficiency and equipment uptime.

Having this analysis on hand, you can already calculate how your income will increase if you use IoT ideas for your startup.

The efficiency the IoT brings to modern environment-related issues can’t be overestimated. Such advantages may not only expand business but evolve the life conditions and cope with modern global challenges that negatively influence our society. Let’s consider a row of environmental issues which can be overcome by applying IoT technology.

Climate deterioration is a colossal issue caused by low energy control, polluted air, dangerous factory wastes, etc. IoT technology allows tracking and controlling these aspects.

Opportunities of IoT provide the control of energy consumption, assessment of the air pollution, evaluation of the harmful impact, and decrease CO2 pollution by managing the traffic. Thus, such technology helps to significantly decrease the greenhouse effect to efficiently control climate deterioration.

Another crucial issue our society has faced is water deficiency: The UN states that 1.8 billion of humanity will be experiencing water shortage within 2025 year. IoT integration effectively decreases water consumption by approximately 50% with the help of tracking it and detecting pipe leaks.

Besides, IoT technology offers intelligent sensors for irrigation, which is also an excellent solution to cope with water scarcity.

Agriculture is another resource-consuming niche influencing our atmosphere. The nutrition needs progress in line with the population, reacting to consumption demands. Thus, this industry requires solutions that will help to raise the output and decrease resources.

Sensors that analyze soils conditions, plants, wildlife, and weather accompanied by the farm facilities, are another brilliant illustration of the IoT enhancing sustainability and providing smart agriculture.

A smart city comprising intelligent waste control is a promising solution provided by the discussed technology. Waste control can be provided by tracking the rubbish amount with special sensors on trash cans. The indicators show when they are full, plan a waste gathering, and optimize directions for drivers. Therefore, the IoT can strengthen the ecosystem.

The IoT technology offers a solution to save endangered animal species. The successful application of this technology has already helped in saving certain animals. The control of existing endangered species with collars and drones to detect their location has rescued the Iberian lynx and African rhinos providing immense help to conservation campaigns.

Apart from saving the environment, the IoT technology solves daily struggles which we may face in cities.

This is a vast sphere where you can quickly implement everything that you like. The best part is that the niche is almost empty, so you have every chance to become a pioneer with IoT opportunities. Here are some of the concepts worth mentioning:

They are just some examples because every device and aspect of city life can be modernized and improved with the help of IoT technologies. Smart shops, smart traffic lights, railway-crossing, and even sensors that listen to the sounds in the city and classify them according to the volume of sound. Such sensors can be taught to define gunshots and pass data to the nearest police department.

After you have seen this amazing data and made sure this technology is a very promising path, let’s get acquainted with this innovation a little bit closer and discover what trends are prevailing now on this market and what aspects should be taken into account and may serve as iot startup ideas.

Here’s a list of IoT opportunities embodied in the brand-new trends:

• Big Data
• Machine Learning
• Blockchain

Now, let’s discuss them more precisely.

Big data appeared long before the IoT. But the whole concept of the Internet of things is about data gathering and processing. IoT devices are built on the basis of special chips whose main purposes are to track users' activity. As far as the IoT ideas are going to be applied to every sphere of human's lives, like houses, transport, medicine, education and many other things, Big Data gathering opens new opportunities to introduce your customer to great experiences which he or she couldn't even imagine before.

Such a massive data flow requires another level of computing capabilities to analyze and process data in a real-time mode. Along with that, we see that some new generation analytical platforms are offering to use GPU-powered databases to process vast data using minimal hardware.

As the main IoT idea is to collect so much data, why not use it to teach the system? IoT boost brings more and more devices into our lives, and as a result, machine to machine communication has to become more and more advanced. Machine learning is needed to make better predictions about the outcome of different situations. It is a matter of life and death if we apply it to medicine or road traffic safety. Usual analytics are static, whereas Machine Learning algorithms constantly improve. The ability of IoT devices to interact with other appliances makes it even easier because of training one, you train them all.

This fantastic ability of IoT devices to get smarter over time is beneficial for businesses. The system is able to detect minimal deviations from the norm long before a human eye could detect them. In addition, for some companies that use expensive equipment, which breakages lead to millions in expenses, precise maintenance prediction means substantial cost savings.

Because data gathering is so essential in IoT work, this data has to be secured during its life cycle. Data control under all these conditions is a complicated task as it will flow across many boundaries with different policies. This complexity shows all the challenges to keeping IoT protected.

The IoT approach is new, and old security technologies cannot be applied here as they don't guarantee proper system protection. The answer is Blockchain. This method is secure, transparent, and efficient.

In plain English, Blockchain is a constantly growing database. The database is distributed, which means there is no main computer. All the data received from IoT devices placed in geographically-diverse secure cloud storage. Thus, blockchain-based cloud computing is a missing piece of a puzzle that brings IoT to a new level.

Let’s now observe great examples integrating internet of things business ideas successfully and actual for the 2021 year.

Sao Paulo offers another great IoT idea: an agricultural solution allowing cows tracking by applying the IoT. The project is prosperous and extremely useful. This solution is released due to implanting special chips to cows that permanently analyze the cow’s health state, track it on the map and deliver this information to a mobile application.

To illustrate, the product can forecast the calving time in case the cow gets pregnant. Or, when the amount of received milk decreases, the farmer can conveniently find out the reason by using the analytics displayed in the solution.

The primary IoT startup ideas of this product comprise an integration of a doorbell and eyehole. What’s more, there’s no need to push a button to activate SkyBell. Guests just have to stay in front of the appliance, so SkyBell will inform the house owners through the application that the guest has arrived.

Via this product, you can also communicate with visitors. The solution displays the front door and shows all the actions occurring there despite it being a day or a night time. Besides, you can set a Skybell system on every door material.

Particle is one among the other efficient IoT ideas for business, which is a full-fledged platform useful for enterprises of various scales in the IoT products deployed. It provides special equipment, technologies, and integration solutions.

Particle has already helped in building over 150,000 projects in 170+ regions and 50% of the Fortune 500 have released IoT devices with the help of this platform. Its famous partners include NASA, SpaceX, Jacuzzi, Root Ventures, Spark Capital, and Qualcomm Ventures.

The key idea of Samsara is a new intelligent camera solution. Apart from a basic video shutting function, its main peculiarity may be quite useful to raise the drivers’ safety. A Samsara camera can indicate an object on the road and inform you about it instantly.

Besides object detection, which might be another vehicle or pedestrian, it measures how far is it and beeps to avoid car accidents. Consequently, the intelligent camera can prevent lots of dangerous situations on the highway for pedestrians as well as drivers.

Kitchen appliances are also one among the other IoT business opportunities, and Smarter is the definition of it. All of them may be operated via a unique phone solution. For example, a Smarter fridge enables tracking the current products stored there.

Smarter kettle can boil water by receiving your remote request through the application. What’s more, an intelligent coffee machine can make coffee for a particular time you can set yourself.

The Molekule project is an efficient solution to another daily task, which is cleaning. The company has released a device that is able to disrupt dust on molecules. Unlike other IoT smart home products, this one can totally get rid of the dust in rooms by entirely destroying them.

The product can synchronize with smart home systems via Wifi. Advanced adaptive settings may be set using a special application.

The total investments of this startup amount to $9.6 million, thanks to such an original smart thermometer. The product is checked and verified by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration). Kinsa thermometer is connected to the app, which displays the final assessments. With the Internet of Things opportunities, Kinsa thermometer evaluates temperature within 10 seconds, while other devices require more time for this.

There are so many IoT business ideas that you can use to build your business or a startup that it would probably need a book to be written to describe all of them. That's why we've chosen the most promising and innovative Internet of things business opportunities. Here they are:

Fitness wearables are not new to us, and it seems that they are connected to the Internet as they communicate with our smartphones. But IoT goes further. A fit bracelet connected with the IoT system and syncing, let's say with EHR software development you can do much more. The easiest and the most obvious ability of such devices is to pass data about your heartbeat to a medical establishment or to a doctor in an emergency. But let's think outside of the box. How about a device that passes information about your training to your smartphone which calculates the nutrition you need to eat now and synchronizes it with your smart fridge which sends information about the products available. For instance, such an app can offer recipes based on the intensity of your training and many other things.

Internet of Things business opportunities in healthcare are even wider. Hospitals are nice places to be improved.If we add IoT technologies here along with modern devices, we can dramatically reduce the average time a person spends on a visit, starting with making an appointment (the task can be easily performed by your smartphone even without your supervision) to leaving a hospital.

If you are lacking Internet of Things startup ideas, here's a tip for you - think about a common problem in a workplace and try to think of its solution with the help of IoT technologies. In such a case, your business idea would be easily sold. For instance, a problem which we've already mentioned - breakage detection. As well as that, various sensors help collect environmental metrics to optimize workflow.

In China and the US, some stores have already taken advantage of IoT and provide a number of features for their customers. For example, clients' bank accounts are automatically debited when they exit a store with certain goods. Also, IoT technology will allow your mobile device to indicate the location on the map with the store production of which you’ve explored, saying, the other day.

It is worth noting the fairly successful statistics of the retail industry with the integration of IoT: its market profit was amounted to 2.8 billion by February 2021 and is projected to reach $94.44 billion through 2025.

IoT benefits also apply to banking. IoT in banking offers individual and customer-oriented solutions. IoT automation and digitalization have made banking an efficient instrument for advanced financial management, simplifying all actions many times over.

Nowadays, more and more banks keep integrating the IoT into their solutions. This fact is defined by the Compound Annual Growth Rate (CARG) of IoT in the banking industry, which is forecasted to achieve 55,3% between 2019 and 2027.

Yes, that's right. Toys are the things that our kids never forget about, and it is a great idea to use them for interaction with kids. Toymail is a company that already produces toys with talkies inside. A user has to download a special app, buy a toy, and leave it with a child. Talkies allow a user to send messages to a child and get replies. This is a great way to always be near your child, even if you are at work.

Another way to use toys is to add sensors to them. If you have children, you probably understand how hard it is to take their temperature. With a thermometer-toy, the task doesn't seem to be a problem anymore.

We can assume that cars have already become smart, which turns this industry into another IoT business opportunity. The fact that soon we will be driven by self-driving cars is a fact, not fiction. So don't lose your chance to make your contribution to the future.

Nowadays the biggest and the most urgent problem of all car owners is security when drivers are in a car and when they aren’t. Multiple built-in sensors can easily identify a driver defining such parameters as weight, height, and arm length. If these parameters don't match, the IoT car locks itself immediately. As well as that, sensors can also improve security on the road when a driver is in a car. For example, simple distance measurements between cars can save lots of lives.

In farming, IoT devices can do lots of tasks. For instance, they can measure the soil humidity and control the water supply. They can control how ripe fruit and vegetables are and inform the farmer about harvesting time, etc. Smart approaches reduce costs and advance forecasts, planning, and harvesting processes.

Infrared cameras and air filters can save our forests in the summertime. These appliances are commonly used in countries where this problem is not an empty phrase. If we combine and improve weather forecast systems with these sensors, we can do the same.

And the last but not the least point in our hit parade is customer appliances. It is a wide concept where you can put anything that brings comfort and joy to our customers. Smart homes, smart offices, smart entertainment, and so on. Here we will recommend that you create a product to make users' lives easier. Have you heard of Bluetooth trackers which help find keys, smartphones (or a dog if you like)? What about a smart fridge that makes you a shopping list based on available products? Or mood trackers which choose music to relax or vice versa energize you? Think about mundane and routine things you hate doing every day and imagine how to make these things more pleasant.

For instance, Postscapes, a company that develops various sensors and IoT devices, offers these types of appliances.. More details about what the IoT technology is, watch in our short video IoT technologies and developments are created to make our lives easier and more comfortable.

Here are some hints for startups to develop your product based on the Internet of Things technology and not fail.

To maximize the efficiency of such great technology as IoT, you should always keep in mind your target audience's pains and needs.

A vital problem of many IoT startups is building solutions with unneeded functionality. Prior to proceeding to product building, you should assess whether it is going to be relevant and demanded or not. The software should be useful in coping with actual issues, not only impressing with the wow-effect.

A huge drawback of many startups at the primary phase is that they only share peculiarities and features of the product instead of clearly defining its purpose and solutions it provides.

As far as IoT environmental sustainability is concerned, it could be anything from “a smart meter helping customers control their energy consumption” to an “end-to-end environmental management system for enterprise use”, as long as the message conveys your product value.

Market analysis may show that there are existing solutions with IoT based business ideas you wanted to implement. You should avoid making another copy of them, which won’t be in demand. Still, you can cooperate with founders of complementary projects and successfully integrate your products to provide consumers with a more efficient and top-quality solution. Such a mutually beneficial partnership will increase the profit for both parties.

Before releasing, you should provide higher scalability, which is a must for every modern solution right from deploying it to the market. Thus, in case the workload of a user increases, the platform will handle it. For this, you should select a cloud infrastructure for immediate scaling when the amount of workload requires it. As a result, your product will work seamlessly without irritating delays.

The market of the Internet of things and new business opportunities is in constant development and expansion, so its analysis should not only be conducted at the initial phase. It should be constantly monitored, because, by the time your product is released, there may be a huge number of new solutions competing with yours. As a result, your solution will be more relevant, competitive, and sought-after.

Data usage is an integral part of the entire IoT concept. But are you taking the most advantage of it? Consider more approaches on how to use the data for startup efficiently: maybe you’ll come up with the new monetization ways, or you may provide your users with some extra insights useful for them.

Finally, here are some more examples that may inspire you on and show some more Internet of Things small business opportunities

• Deako. A company producing smart light switches with Bluetooth implemented.
• June. The concept of June is building smart ovens with cameras that can identify your meal and recommend cooking mode and time.
• Roost. It’s a solution for common irritating home challenges by basically silencing the smoke battery alarm and serving as an intelligent smoke alarm itself.

Cleveroad is an outsourcing software development company from Ukraine with 10+ years of experience in delivering over 170 successful projects of various complexity to our clients. Our company has expertise in a row of various domains, such as FinTech, Healthcare, Logistics, and many more.

By choosing a partnership with us, you’ll be provided with a wide range of benefits:

• A thorough free consultation regarding your project from our Business Analysts
• Signing a non-disclosure agreement (NDAs) on your request
• Three flexible cooperation models suitable for every case: dedicated team, fixed price, time & materials
• Productive development flow with no bureaucracy
• Product quality assurance and verification on every phase
• Post-release support, maintenance, and promotion services for your product
• A cutting-edge tech stack and state-of-art creation approach
• An utter software development team comprising agile-oriented, competent, and certified experts

Besides, Cleveroad specialists have a wide experience in developing solutions based on IoT technology, so in case you have a unique startup idea, we are always ready to bring it to reality to meet all your requirements.

More details about what the IoT technology is, watch in our short video