The Internet of Things (IoT), which connects various devices to each other and the cloud, is widely considered to be the next big growth market for tech companies. That’s why companies like Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) and Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) launched dedicated IoT units, and the market seems flooded with new wearables, smart home devices, and other connected gadgets.
To gain a better understanding of the IoT market, let’s take a look at 10 crucial facts and figures.
Research firm IDC expects worldwide spending on IoT hardware, software, and services to rise from about $800 billion this year to nearly $1.4 trillion by 2021. This year, the IoT areas that will attract the biggest investments include manufacturing operations, freight monitoring, production asset management, and smart grid technologies.
BI Intelligence estimates that 24 billion IoT devices will be installed by 2020. It expects that total to be split between three entities — businesses (11.2 billion devices), governments (7.7 billion devices), and consumers (5 billion devices).
That forecast is much lower than Cisco’s widely cited estimate of 50 billion devices by 2020, which it made in 2011. But it’s still more bullish than ABI Research’s target of 21 billion devices by 2022.