Predictions indicate that the market of the Internet of Things (IoT) is expanding at a furious pace and by 2016 it will hit the $235 million mark in services spending. Calculations show the number of connected devices inflated by 30 percent, bringing the total IoT family to 6.4 billion units worldwide.
Analysts looked even further than 2016 and estimated that a total of 20.8 billion IoT units will populate the homes and offices of the globe by 2020.
The Gartner report shows a prominent increase in the professional area. IoT systems will become more and more common, forcing some businesses to contract while third parties that deliver, install and operate the IoT devices will flourish.
The report underlines that the consumer and connectivity services have the potential to take off even faster than the business segment.
"IoT services are the real driver of value in IoT, and increasing attention is being focused on new services by end-user organisations and vendors," Vice President and esteemed analyst at Gartner, Jim Tully, affirms.
"Aside from connected cars, consumer uses will continue to account for the greatest number of connected things, while enterprise will account for the largest spending," Tully says.
Gartner's estimation counted 4 billion connected items in the consumer sector in 2016, with over 300 percent growth until 2020, when the number of such gadgets may reach 13.5 billion.
The data analyzed for 2016 indicates that consumer applications scored $546 billion, a value accounting for roughly 63 percent of the enterprise sector, which saw a spending of $868 billion.
When it scrutinized the business sector, Gartner split the spending in two categories: cross-industry devices that appear in various fields and vertical-specific instruments, which are used in a specific number of areas.
"Connected things for specialised use are currently the largest category, however, this is quickly changing with the increased use of generic devices", Tully underlines.
"By 2020, cross-industry devices will dominate the number of connected things used in the enterprise."
Some are still wary of the IoT and fear that connecting everything to the Internet has the potential to fundamentally change the way we think about the surrounding world. Whether the IoT brings a Skynet-like era or a fast-paced new economy model remains to be seen.
