It was a hectic past week for us at Asia IoT Business Platform as we hosted press briefing sessions in both Bangkok and Jakarta. At the same time, we also concluded our annual IoT survey which looks at the perspectives of local enterprises and organizations in Southeast Asia pertaining to IoT deployment and implementation.

I don’t even know where to start when it comes to Jakarta’s roads. Is it bad? Horrible? A nightmare? They are probably the kind of roads that you can find in the deepest bowels of hell.

Smart cities continue to be a hot topic at this year’s Asia IoT Business Platform 2016 Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur. Graced by the presence of Ministry officials and city mayors, presentations and discussions on IoT technologies related to smart cities raise much interest in the conference participants. Interestingly, while technologies were extensively discussed, so was another aspect sometimes overlooked - engaging and educating smart citizens.

August had been a very busy month for us, but we're happy to witness the growth of Indonesian and Malaysian enterprise IoT markets since we launched Asia IoT Business Platform 3 years back.

Without any surprise, Indonesia is considered to be one of the most prospective markets in Southeast Asia for enterprise Internet of Things (IoT) adoption. Gartner predicted that by 2018, Indonesia, together with other Southeast Asia countries, will have spent a total of $62 billion for technology.

Data and predictive analytics have transformed finance, manufacturing and many consumer industries. 

Enterprise IoT Business Potential – A lot of big numbers being thrown around, but where are the real opportunities?

Pokémon Go is a free-to-play location-based Augmented Reality mobile game and it has taken the world by storm. So far, it is officially available only in the US, Australia and New Zealand. It immediately became the top free app in the US and was so popular that servers crashed briefly on launch day. The share price of Nintendo, the company who owns the Pokémon franchise and 33% of the company that developed the game, shot up 50% in three trading days since the game was launched.

Personal Fitness and the Internet of Things

With advances in technologies, the costs of sensors have plummeted, making it possible for manufacturers to embed them into smart watches and fitness trackers. These wearable devices measure data such as the number of steps walked, heart rate, quality of sleep, steps climbed, and a number of other personal health metrics.

HOW CAN BODY SCANNING TECH HELP RETAILERS?

Usually, up to half of the items would be returned to the sellers because of the size being an annoyance to both customers and retailers. Returning items can cost the retailers millions of dollars in extra shipping and warehouse fees.

Do you know that the runner-up for Twitter’s 2014 Golden Tweet came from Indonesia?

Tak bisa kita pungkiri, kota Jakarta telah benar-benar membenahi dirinya dalam beberapa tahun belakangan ini. Gedung gedung perkantoran, shopping malls bertaraf international, dan berbagai merek-merek ternama dunia telah melebarkan sayapnya ke ibukota. Namun, apakah yang terbesit di benak Anda ketika ditanya pendapat Anda mengenai kota Jakarta? Setidaknya beberapa dari kalian akan menyebutkan kemacetan yang luar biasa di kota Jakarta sebagai ciri khas dari kota Jakarta ini. MACET.

It's no surprise that Singapore is often in the limelight with regards to Smart Cities development in the Southeast Asia: with 100% urban population, strong ICT infrastructure and the highest smartphone penetration in the world, the government has successfully launched more than a dozen smart city projects as part of its Smart Nation Program.

Cities around the world are beginning to understand the huge potential of the Internet of Things (IoT). In Barcelona, those possibilities have started to become reality.

Jakarta is looking to utilize Internet of Things ( IOT ) to realize the dream of becoming a smart city, this is in addition to using Qlue as a platform to resolve public complaints.  The various applications were discussed by Setiaji , Head of Technical Implementation Unit ( UPT ) of Jakarta Smart City , at the Asia IOT Business Platform Media Day that took place on June 16, 2016.

Last Thursday, a media day for the 9th edition of Asia IoT Business Platfrom: IoT Indonesia was hosted at the Jakarta Smart City Lounge.

Jakarta Smart City portal was introduced in 2015 by the DKI Jakarta Provincial Government as a platform for citizens to complain about problems that occur in the surrounding area, such as traffic violations, the damage done to public facilities, rubbish, beggars, street vendors wild, floods, etc.

By now you would have heard of the Internet of Things (IoT)—billions of devices connected and communicating with each other and with businesses—and how it promises dramatic enhancements in efficiency, opportunities for new products and business models, and the potential for greater customer intimacy.

These days, we see communication service providers (CSPs) getting increasingly actively involved in the IoT space. Being at the core of IoT value chain, telecommunications and IT service providers can bring together the large ecosystem of partners and speed up the time to market for IoT.

In our day and age technical advances are occurring in increasing frequency, making it harder for customers to understand which product or service or which combination of products and services can offer value to their business.

Throughout the 6 editions of Asia IoT Business Platform in emerging Southeast Asian countries, we observed differing levels of engagement from the governments and local stakeholders in pushing out smart nation and smart city initiatives.

According to IDC, manufacturing is the sector that will lead the way in worldwide IoT spending with $165.6 billion total in 2015. Vernon Turner, SVP and IoT Research Fellow states that “manufacturing has been connecting his supply chains, products, customers, and even workers for some time now, which makes a good fit for IoT deployments, as they really embrace the value of business outcomes”.

Through conversations with IT executives from enterprises in the region since 2014, we saw great interest in cloud, data and the corresponding data analytics that can unlock most potential in businesses.

We spent a large part of the year in the cities of Manila, Bangkok, Jakarta & Kuala Lumpur speaking to local enterprises about this (too) broad & (too) overused term: the Internet of Things (IoT). We discovered very quickly that while IoT seems to be very much over/wrongly-used in the English speaking world, there really isn't a direct local translation in these 4 countries.

World Population Review clocked Jakarta at 10.2 million residents at the end of last year. If the surrounding metro area is also included, the population exceeds 28 million. Each day, Jakarta residents cope with a variety of infrastructure challenges, including sluggish traffic, shaky power grids, slow internet speeds, and floods brought on by inadequate drainage systems.

The team had the chance to interview Hemant Tiwari, Managing Director, Enterprise Group, Hewlett-Packard (HP) prior to his presentation at the Asia IoT Business Platform in Jakarta this month.

When Telkom Indonesia came up with a series of public services projects ranging from electronic services (i.e. e-office, e-kelurahan, e-puskesmas) to a mobile-based digital media that can respond to citizens’ complaints in 2014, a huge question was posed: are Indonesians ready to deal with IoT?

With great technology comes great benefits, and with great power comes great responsibility. Technology has been harnessed extensively over the years to drive efficiency and sustainability to meet the exigencies of a modern society.

One element that sets the Asia IoT Business Platform apart from other IoT conferences is that it brings together the leading telcos of a country for one main purpose: to elevate and improve the IoT ecosystem for the benefit of different stakeholders, be it businesses, investors, government, or the common consumers.

With the digital revolution in full steam and the Internet of Things (IoT) already a reality, it is only fitting for cars to join the list of devices that are connected to the internet and become part of the IoT ecosystem.