Northern.tech Issues Report Showing Software Challenges Remain Leading Cause of Delays in Industrial IoT Product Launches
June 10, 2026
News
Northern.tech announced its annual State of Industrial IoT Device Lifecycle Management report. Research includes that organizational ambitions for connected products are running well ahead of the systems built to support them and the gap between business objectives and current device management abilities is no longer a future challenge, it is ongoing.
"OEMs are scaling faster than their infrastructure," said Eystein Stenberg, CTO, Northern.tech. "With the EU CRA reporting obligations deadline later this year, now is the time. OEMs must address IoT device lifecycle management holistically, from product design to decommission."
Key Findings:
Managing increasing complexity facilitates future success
- 10 percent of OEMs describe their IoT products as single-device systems where the product and the device act as one
- 90 percent manage IoT products with multiple devices, and 85 percent are expecting the number of devices in their products to extend over the year
An infrastructure failure looms on the horizon
- More than half responded that the infrastructure they rely on to manage their product footprint will not handle the projected growth
- Three in five OEMs believe their current device management infrastructure will be inadequate in three years or less, and for more than one tenth, that point of failure is less than a year away
For the second consecutive year software remains the top source of product launch delays
- The average IoT product now takes approximately four and a half years to reach general availability
Security and compliance gaps creating market roadblocks
- Regulatory and external delays moved up two spots in the rankings of reasons for product launch delays
- Outside security audits grew seven percent, while self-reported security capacities declined across all four metrics measured
"Products, fleet management, security, compliance – these are not static elements in IoT. A secure product today does not mean it is secure tomorrow or next year," states Stenberg. "The product lines and the infrastructure supporting them must evolve in tandem with each other to maintain the level of security consumers, businesses, and regulatory bodies demand."
For more information, visit northern.tech/.
Chad Cox is the Production Editor at Embedded Computing Design. His responsibilities are centered around content creation, writing and editing, and article research and development. Chad covers industry news and events and is known to interact with various industrial leaders via on-premise visits and online interviews. He is responsible for the digital footprint and dissemination of news via social media posts, advertising creation and the production of newsletters including the Embedded Computing Design’s Daily.
He is well versed in many facets of industrial computing including Edge AI, IoT, Processing, Security, Open Source, and more.
Chad graduated from the University of Cincinnati with a B.A. in Cultural and Analytical Literature and holds a master’s in education.
