LIVE FROM GSMA MOBILE 360 NORTH AMERICA: Michael O’Hara, chief marketing officer at GSMA, opened up today’s event by outlining the industry body’s commitment to “mobilise another five billion devices”, as uptake of IoT begins to take hold across North America.

Highlighting some of the growth seen in the region over the past year in particular, O’Hara conceded the conversation around connected devices “is more relevant to North America”, compared to other regions.

“We see North America as a great environment for mobile technology development”, he said. “It has the right level of competition and regulation, and in terms of innovation, the region is leading the way.”

He also outlined some of the ways GSMA is working to protect personal user information, as a way to mitigate some of the risks around more devices getting connected.

Along with looking after and promoting mobile user identity, O’Hara said the GSMA is focussed on “connecting everyone and connecting everything”.

GSMA’s latest North America mobile economy report, also released today, showed the region is steaming ahead of its global competitors in IoT, with North America having the highest proportion of M2M connections around the world, and is forecast to grow at an average annual growth rate of 25 per cent through to 2020.

“More than any other region, North America has embraced the connected living concept and broader potential of Internet of Things,” read the report.

O’Hara used his presentation to talk up some of the innovations the industry is seeing in the space, including continued growth in the connected car space, the expanding wearables area, and some of the developments around the idea of a connected city through things like connected bicycles.

“There are some great examples occurring through IoT that serve as nice example of ways in which mobile is empowering people’s lives,” he said. “Take the example of the connected toothbrush, which uploads your brushing performance to your dentist, or the connected luggage, which tracks your bag anywhere in the world. All these examples show how mobile is improving people’s everyday lives.”

While talking through some of the innovations, O’Hara also drew on the importance for mobile to work as a secure platform, a commitment shared by operators worldwide.

“We feel mobile can become a digital identity for 2 billion people. Our vision is around using your mobile credentials to log into websites and services across the world,” he said. “GSMA’s solution is called Mobile Connect, and ensures you can use this in a secure way. Of course this comes with a firm commitment from mobile operators and ourselves to look after this data.”