Companies to Watch The faster and more reliable networks ushered in with 5G are poised to open use cases that were simply not actionable in legacy networks. For healthcare, in particular, the potential applications hold promise for many of the core pain points: cost, access, and data. Of course, there are consumer-facing solutions that big tech is pouring into, headlined by Apple’s Apple Watch, Alphabet’s $2.1 billion acquisition of Fitbit last year, and the launch of Amazon’s Halo Band in August 2020. To varying degrees, the devices track everything from body temperature, heart rate, sleep habits, and body fat. Depending on a user’s health care system, they can share some of that data to their electronic health records. Healthcare monitoring extends far outside everyday-fitness wearables. In the realm of diabetes care, companies like Dexcom and Roche are offering constantly-online wearables as an effective mode of continuously tracking blood sugar levels. Other wearable devices even automatically administer insulin. Devices monitoring heart health and detecting heart disease have taken off as well. One startup, AliveCor — whose heart-monitoring band is the first FDA-approved, Apple Watch medical-device accessory — has raised over $150 million, according to Crunchbase. Intuitive Surgical, which develops robots for minimally-invasive surgical proceedings, has increasingly integrated IoT systems into its products. Like many tech companies, its stock exploded during the pandemic. Last year, it generated nearly $6 billion in revenue. In the industrial realm, Honeywell is quickly transforming into an industrial-software hybrid company primarily through its Honeywell Forge, a suite of software offerings that correspond with sensors, panels, cameras, and other industrial hardware products it sells. In its latest quarterly earnings report, German industrial giant Siemens said its IoT-focused Digital Industries and Smart Infrastructure units made over €4 billion in revenue in the first three months of 2022, both up roughly 13% year-over-year. Takeaway: For every thinkpiece about the metaverse, and parts of the world migrating to a VR or AR world where Mark Zuckerberg can sell digital Gucci clothes to the digital avatar you keep for yourself, another washing machine or industrial factory is getting plugged into the Internet of Things. Part of the future may reside in some yet-to-be-realized digital world, but what’s more likely is the internet will become the backbone of all the technology and devices we use in the real world. For that, you won’t need an avatar, you’ll just need a new fridge. |