The IoT Hype Cycle

We know that last year Gartner placed the IoT at the Peak of Inflated Expectations on its annual hype cycle chart. That is probably not too unfair. From there the only way is down to the Trough of Disillusionment. I was playing around with Google Trends this afternoon to see how this plays out in terms of what people are searching for. Several observations:

• the search term “IoT” seems to have taken over from “Internet of Things” for general web searches. Not surprising as the acronym becomes more widely know and accepted;
• since the end of 2016 Google News searches for both terms has declined dramatically, particularly for “Internet of Things” – changes to the way Google measure volumes in February 2017 would not really account for this as the trend started several months earlier;
• general web searches for “IoT” still seem to be growing or possibly plateauing.