​Is Intel bringing its ‘A’ game to trillion-dollar Internet of Things market?

Intel is bringing its "A" game to the Internet of Things (IoT) market, with record Research and Development investments, patents, partnerships and key acquisitions to boost its expanding portfolio.

That’s the bold view of Strategy Analytics, which claims the tech giant - fresh from axing 12,000 jobs as it moves away from its core PC business - is going “all out” to be a driving force in the growing IoT industry.

“Intel is bringing it’s “A” game to the IoT table and that’s absolutely essential since its rivals are some of the most influential vendors in the business,” Strategy Analytics director of IoT Research, Laura DiDio, said.

“IoT competition is intense and cutthroat and Intel does face challenges.”

According to DiDio, Intel is focusing on pivotal IoT vertical segments, which include Retail, Smart Transportation (e.g., Automotive/Autonomous vehicles and connected transport logistics), Smart Industrial (e.g. Manufacturing, Energy and Robotics), Smart Building and Healthcare.

In addition, partnerships and investments with leading data analytics vendors are becoming commonplace for the company, which includes an 18 per cent stake in Cloudera to promote Open Source Hadoop.

During the past 24 months, Intel has also made six major acquisitions aimed at increasing its stake in IoT, cloud, data analytics and Field Programmable Arrays, while spending $12.1 billion on R&D during 2015 alone.

“This is the most of any chipmaker and it accounted for 22 per cent of all research monies spent by all semiconductor vendors last year,” DiDio added.

“Also, the U.S. Patent and Trade Office awarded Intel 2,048 patents in 2015, which gave Intel the Number Nine ranking among all corporations last year.”

But while Intel has a strong, well respected, global brand with the IoT space, the vendor still lags behind rival Qualcomm in the mobile space and it is playing catch up to IBM in software analytics.

“Intel will have to come up with a viable strategy - particularly in the mobile space going forward,” Strategy Analytics Director of IoT, Andrew Brown, added.

Intel’s growing portfolio comes in parallel with an expanding IoT industry, with Strategy Analytics determining that the market for all elements of IoT currently stands at $150 billion in 2016, and will grow to $550 billion by 2025.

However, for key players in computing hardware, software, system integration, analytics, communications, and professional services associated with the Internet of Things, clear definition remains critical in determining the opportunity for IoT.

“In the history of technology market analysis, this is the first time people have been talking about a market in the extraordinary terms of ‘trillions of dollars’ with such a lack of clarity on market definition,” Strategy Analytics President, Harvey Cohen, said.

“Our research examined IoT market potential in terms of its relationships to global economies, non-residential investment, and total IT expenditures to produce a number with transparency on key assumptions.”

But with the entire global IT opportunity value in the $3.5 trillion range in 2016, Brown said it requires “heroic assumptions” to produce IoT market sizing in the trillions of dollars range.

“We project IoT to grow to be about 11 per cent of total IT spending by 2025,” he added.