The Power of Patents: Leveraging Text Mining and Social Network Analysis to Forecast IoT Trends

Technology has become an indispensable competitive tool as science and technology have progressed throughout history. Organizations can compete on an equal footing by implementing technology appropriately. Technology trends or technology lifecycles begin during the initiation phase. Finally, it reaches saturation after entering the maturity phase. As technology reaches saturation, it will be removed or replaced by another. This makes investing in technologies during this phase unjustifiable. Technology forecasting is a critical tool for research and development to determine the future direction of technology. Based on registered patents, this study examined the trends of IOT technologies. A total of 3697 patents related to the Internet of Things from the last six years of patenting have been gathered using lens.org for this purpose. The main people and companies were identified through the creation of the IOT patent registration cooperation network, and the main groups active in patent registration were identified by the community detection technique. The patents were then divided into six technology categories: Safety and Security, Information Services, Public Safety and Environment Monitoring, Collaborative Aware Systems, Smart Homes/Buildings, and Smart Grid. And their technical maturity was identified and examined using the Sigma Plot program. Based on the findings, information services technologies are in the saturation stage, while both smart homes/buildings, and smart grid technologies are in the saturation stage. Three technologies, Safety and Security, Public Safety and Environment Monitoring, and Collaborative Aware Systems are in the maturity stage.