A poll of more than 100 enterprise users and product makers that buy IoT technology shows that those individuals are not allowing the global pandemic to interfere with their investment plans in the second half of 2020 and beyond.

The IoT M2M Council (IMC) – the world’s largest community of qualified IoT buyers with 25,000 members – has released its quarterly IoT Buyers’ Index for Q2 2020, which shows that almost 25% of those responding plan to make investments in the next six months, up slightly from the same survey in Q4 2019.

“About half of our survey respondents are planning investments within the next year, which is up even more substantially than the six-month figure,” said Sara Brown, IMC chairman and the VP of marketing at technology provider MultiTech. “IoT technologies are at the core of mitigation strategies for the pandemic, including telehealth, remote crowd control, smart workplaces and, of course, managing the supply chain. In as much as IoT is a big part of the pandemic solution, Covid-19 appears to be accelerating IoT technology deployment.”

The IMC survey tracks trends in IoT buying patterns and divides respondents into enterprise users, product makers (OEMs) and apps developers. From the OEM category, the number of respondents that said they had no foreseeable IoT investment plans fell sharply. Among enterprise users, the number of respondents planning on investing inside of six months rose sharply. And among apps developers, the number of respondents planning on 12-month investments rose sharply, while those planning on six-month investments declined slightly.

“It’s important to remember that this survey represents just a single data point and that things can change quickly if the entire global economy contracts suddenly,” said Brown. “Having said that, we’re seeing very significant increases in interest in our IMC projects across the board, especially for our online events.”

The IMC is planning a full-scale online conference covering both consumer and industrial IoT applications this coming September; for more info, got to: https://www.iotm2mcouncil.org/iotdays

The IMC is the largest trade group dedicated to the global IoT and M2M sector with more than 25,000 IoT enterprise users, product makers, designers and apps developers that buy IoT products as members. Board sustainer companies include 1NCE, Aeris, Amazon Web Services, AVSystem, BICS, Digi International, HPE, iBasis, Kore, Losant, MultiTech, NimbeLink, Pod Group, Semtech, Taoglas, Tata Communications, Telit, U-Blox and Vodafone.

Read IMC executive editor Steve Rogerson’s blog on this latest survey: https://www.iotm2mcouncil.org/blog_home.asp?display=151