This will be my personal view regarding IoT in Malaysia for 2018. It’s now the end of the year 2017 and much has been said about IoT in Malaysia. In fact, my IoT related talks for this year reached the highest i.e. 32 Talks as Keynote, Invited Speakers, Invited Lectures, etc (not including as Panel moderator). Even the conference theme on Industrial Revolution 4.0 has superseded Smart Cities themes. You can take a look at what has happened in 2017 in my previous article “IoT in Malaysia – 2017 In Review“. What do we have in store for 2018? Here’re some of my predictions:

1. IoT will take a back seat to make way for IR 4.0 – Malaysia is now harping on a new theme i.e. “4th Industrial Revolution“. Mainly due to the nation’s interest in developing a new Blueprint/Framework and was allocated a budget as announced in Malaysia’s 2018 Budget recently. Of course, Industrial Revolution needs to be taken seriously. Many companies can become obsolete if they are not aware or not ride the same wave. In many cases, the SMEs in the rural area are still at Industrial Revolution 2.0. Not many have adopted ICT (except marketing online) but not their operations. IR 4.0 comprised of several important technologies such AI, VR, 3D, Robotics, BDA, and IoT. It will be a mistake if they ignore IoT as part of the equation.
2. Year of Education and Talent Development – As much as we want to jump into the running train and enter the IR 4.0 by leaps and bound, without the right talent, we can’t go much further. Education is key and preparing for the Jobs of the Future is also key. We must quickly refresh contents in the University. It seems approval process for the IPTA (Public Universities) is much slower than the IPTS (Private Universities). We do not deny to have strong fundamentals but we need to quickly update and upgrade with tools and technology. We need to reduce the talent gap between what’s required by the industry and what was produced by the Universities.
3. IoT Entrepreneurs Will Mushroom – Gartner predicts that by 2017, 50 percent of IoT solutions (typically a product combined with a service) will originate in startups that are less than three years old. Malaysia also have their own IoT Ecosystem. Even the Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Datuk Seri Wilfred Madius Tangau urged the public to support local entrepreneurs, stating that confidence needs to start from home before going global. The recent Global Entrepreneurship Community (GEC) Summit, proves that the Malaysians are eager to become Job Creators. We need to nurture and support them. Think Malaysian product/technology first, give them the opportunity to trial. Provide them with funds to ease their pain of entry to the market and giving them a longer runway to sustain before real market traction.
4. From Product-based to Service-based to Outcome-based Business Model – It’s not going to be selling silo products based on its features. It’s no longer about subscription-based or pay-per used based. We will see the full strength of IoT when it can develop an Outcome-Based Business Model whereby we pay the services based on the outcomes such as an increase in new revenue streams, costs savings, customer loyalty, new creative products developed etc. (Note: This topic will be covered in detail in the future article).
5. IoT Will Focus on Transportation, Insurance, and Health – We will see Startups such as Katsana, REKA and Jom Parking in providing creative IoT solutions for Transportation segment. Favoriot, Teleme, GetDoc, and Doctor2U are startups that will focus on Health and Insurance too. There’s going to be many more Malaysian IoT startups that are eager to offer their solutions for Malaysia market or globally.

About the Author

Dr. Mazlan Abbas the Co-Founder of FAVORIOT Sdn Bhd. He is an IOT Evangelist and a Thought Leader. He received an award as 50 Most Impactful Smart Cities Leaders by World CSR 2017. He is ranked No. 20th Thought Leader in IOT by 2014 Onalytics Report – “The Internet of Things – Top 100 Thought Leaders”, ranked Top 10 in IoT Top 100 Influencers by Postscapes 2016/2017, ranked Top 100 in Smart Cities Top Experts by Agilience Authority Index May 2016. You can reach him on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Check all his presentation slides HERE.

Here’s some the wishlist I collected so far:

“(1) A directory of all IOT company & startups and products in Malaysia (2) An app using IoT that can decide on what developers can and should or should not be done in a township or local area.”– Rajendran

“I wish that relevant gov. agency will provide financial assistance for local IoT Device Makers (commercial type, not hobbies or hackton type) to develop, certify, manufacture locally made IoT End Devices that connect to Malaysia own middleware such as FAVORIOT, and local clients/startup use this device & platform to create #ConnectedSolutions, I understand the invention will be expensive , the specification will not be top notch, but in time our local device maker will become mature, device quality, performance will become world quality and remember the money keep circulating internally.” – Pathmanathan Muniandy.

“Need projects to fund the ecosystem.” – Tzer Man.

“Intelligent Traffic Controller using Fuzzy Neural Expert System inside a vehicle, avoid an accident, brake automation even at high speed.” Aziz Shah Sulaiman.

“The city of tomorrow requires collaboration across every layer of the public, private sector and government agencies. By digitizing our mindset with cutting-edge technology like FAVORIOT platform, we believe this group is further evolving our commitment to pursue and created a technology that provides wider reliable coverage, safe, more usable capacity and scalability, full-featured value, and decades of network longevity in Kuala Lumpur and across every community in Malaysia.” – Aizat

“The whole engineering education should evolve by having seamless integration between hardware & software without differentiating between engineering and computing using IoT.” – Noor Iziddin

“Remote acquisition, signal conditioning, immersive computing such as AR and VR, embedded system running machine language algorithm ..are a necessity for industrial IoT development.” – Mohamad Safri Mohd Dali (JTMi)

If you want your wishlist to be submitted here, please in the following form:

As we end the year 2017, Malaysia’s National IoT Strategic Roadmap has reached 2.5 years old in maturity. Below are some of my personal opinions regarding the Malaysia’s journey towards building a new economy based on IoT:

1. My Opinion – Malaysia’s National Strategic Roadmap (July 10, 2015)
2. Malaysia’s National IoT Strategic Roadmap – 2016 In Review (Dec. 30, 2016)
3. 2017 IoT Predictions in Malaysia (Dec. 31, 2016)
4. IoT in Malaysia (May 8, 2017)

Let me review the 2017 crystal ball predictions which I made earlier what will happen in 2017.

1. Big Market for IoT Certified Training and Consultancy – As predicted, IoT training seems to take off the ground. It ranges from basic awareness to hands-on training. Our company, Favoriot has been involved in providing the IoT platform to our training partners (UTM, MyInvent/MyDuino and Trity Technologies) for their hands-on training.
2.  Sexy LoRa – In Malaysia, edotco, a unit of Axiata, has teamed up with Atilze Digital, a division of Yen Global, to launch a LoRaWAN network, initially covering the Klang Valley region with 25 LoRa gateways at edotco’s tower sites. Enterprises are being offered access to ready-made IoT applications for Smart City, Smart Building, Smart Home, Smart Agriculture and other services via the new LoRa network. However, Atilze seems not to limit their business with LoRa since they have other collaborations with other telcos such as U-Mobile when they signed a collaboration agreement with telco operator U Mobile Sdn Bhd for the provision of 3G and 4G LTE connectivity for the Atilze Connected Car devices. The Atilze on-board OBDII connected car devices are equipped with various sensors that collect a range of data that is sent to the Atilze Cloud Platform through the 3G and 4G LTE connectivity provided by U Mobile. It’s also interesting to note that Green Packet, through its IoT business, via a 22% equity interest in Atilze Digital Sdn Bhd, is expected to contribute positively next year. Similar to the e-services segment, Green Packet’s participation in the IoT business is still preliminary. On 8 May 2017, Cyberview and Atilze’s update confirmed that “Cyberjaya is now the first smart city in Southeast Asia to roll out a city-wide LoRa network to connect various IoT sensors.” However, it seems after such a big hype, NB-IoT and SigFox have yet to be launch in Malaysia. Maybe we will see them next year. Cytron has designed LoRaWAN Atilze shield which  connects to Atilze’s Fabrick platform. It gives the user free access to 28 industry grade outdoor gateways in Klang Valley area. Here is the coverage area.
3. IOT Platform is Key – Surprisingly, many have yet to grasp the real understanding and the importance of an IoT platform for managing devices and developing IoT applications. We need to create more talents in the whole value-chain of IoT – beginning from sensors, connectivity, middleware, applications, and analytics. Favoriot play a part in this value-chain by providing IoT platform to 17 local universities and 1 overseas university in an attempt to create the new Generation-IoT.
4. IOT Applications –  KATSANA launched DriveMark telematics app as means to collect driving behavior data. The data will help the user to become safer drivers on the road and offer them rewards for good behavior. Currently, three insurance companies Allianz Malaysia Bhd, Etiqa Insurance Bhd and Etiqa Takaful Bhd have paved its way to boost adoption of Usage-based Insurance (UBI) in Malaysia. REKA‘s CRETA (Conscious Reka Transport Apparatus) is powered by the Reka Innovation Gear (RIG), a proprietary IoT development board which the company had been developing since January 2016. RIG is the Ubiquitous Autonomous Car Gear, which is designed to convert an ordinary car into a self-driving vehicle that can communicate with other autonomous cars. It seems connected vehicle is going to be a big market in Malaysia soon.

What are the challenges that we faced in 2017?

1. Uncoordinated Efforts – Honestly speaking, we failed in coordinating all the efforts as stated in the National IoT Strategic Roadmap. Although there are many attempts by various parties, nobody knows who are doing what and what is the impact. Many great initiatives are gone un-noticed by the Government Agencies (MIMOS, MDEC, CREST and MCMC). Too bad, many achievements have gone unrecognized too especially from the newly IoT Startups.
2. Slow in Building IoT Ecosystem – Since there is no concerted effort at the National level to identify who’s who in the IoT industry, many of the industry players have to work in silos. As mentioned many times, we cannot achieve by working alone, no-one can become a hero single-handedly because to build a meaningful IoT solution,  we need a very conducive IoT ecosystem. Thus, some industry players have initiated their own community and agreed to join in an informal manner via WhatsApp IoT Discussion Groups (Group 1 comprised of 256 and Group 2 comprised of 114). Others can still join by clicking the links – WhatsApp IoT Discussion Group 2 and Telegram. The latest list of Malaysia IoT Ecosystem.
3. Slow in Traction and Adoption – Blame on the “demand” side. If we attend IoT-related conferences or Exhibitions, we (the “supply” side) will bump into each other again and again. This is not a good sign. We need the “demand” or the end-user to join the band-wagon too. Without the right mindset, it’s going to take a longer time to adopt any smart solutions in the organizations. Otherwise, most of the “supply side” from Malaysia will have to go beyond our Malaysian shores to get their products in the market such as Promosys‘ LoRa, SigFox, and NB-IoT devices. Together with Singaporean Company ORIGIN Exterminators Pte Ltd, Promosys developed RATSENSE which help building owners and business managers track rodent real-time activity to implement effective controls. Furthermore, we also want to see our dream for our very own Malaysian autonomous vehicle from REKA to be a reality.