Pod Group CEO Sam Colley has been elected as chairman of the IoT M2M Council (IMC), the largest trade organisation serving the global IoT sector.

Pod Group is an enterprise network operator and part of Giesecke+Devrient.

Sri Ramachandran, CTO of Somos, a provider of telephone numbers and identity information services, was elected as vice chair at the group’s recent annual meeting.

“During the pandemic, the number of technology companies joining the IMC board more than doubled,” said Colley.” Our organisation proved itself to be an extremely cost-effective way of reaching qualified IoT adopters. The universe of those adopters is expanding, and the IMC will now concentrate on expanding its reach by incorporating newcomers into our rank-and-file adopter membership.”

The IMC is comprised of 25,000 product makers (OEMs), enterprise users and app developers that deploy IoT technology, and more than 30 companies that provide IoT products and services serve on the group’s board.

The IMC has just published a white paper analysing primary data from over 200 early-stage IoT adopters indicating a new-found maturity among those in proof-of-concept projects. The aggregate data are drawn from the group’s exclusive survey tool – the IoT Readiness Calculator – that measures the IoT readiness of users and compares it with other adopters.

Data points indicating maturity include a majority of respondents looking to add value with IoT technology and not just cut costs, and over 15% of those surveyed envisioned connecting over 100,000 devices when their projects reach full-scale. You can access the IMC white paper here.

“It would appear that that the IoT industry is reaching a new phase, in terms of the experience level, the scale and the objectives of those deploying connected devices,” said Colley, “The IMC’s mission is to accelerate the adoption of IoT technology for the public good, and we’re confident that the rising tide will lift all ships.”

The IMC is the largest trade group dedicated to the global IoT and M2M sector. Board companies include 1NCE, A¹ Digital, Aeris, Airgain, Astrocast, BICS, Blues Wireless, Digi International, eSat Global, Fibocom, FloLive, Ground Control, Gurtam, GXC, Hologram, iBasis, Ignion, IoT Launch, Keyfactor, KORE, KYOCERA AVX, Losant, MultiTech, Pelion, Pod Group, Quectel, Sateliot, Somos, Tata Communications, Telit, Utimaco and Vodafone.