Gartner estimates the number of connected devices in homes around the world will grow from less than 300 million in 2015 to over one billion by 2017.
“Connected things include smart LED lighting, healthcare monitoring, smart locks and various sensors for such things as motion detection or carbon monoxide,” Gartner says. “Smart LED lighting will record the highest growth of IoT consumer applications, from six million units in 2015 to 570 million units by 2020. Light will move from being an illumination source to a communications carrier incorporating safety, health, pollution and personalised services.”
The forecasts are part of Gartner’s overall predictions for the growth of connected devices in smart cities. Gartner estimates the total number of devices to increase from 1.1 billion in 2015 to 2.7 billion in 2017.
“”Smart cities represent a great revenue opportunity for technology and services providers (TSPs), but providers need to start to plan, engage and position their offerings now,” said Bettina Tratz-Ryan, research vice president at Gartner.
Gartner defines a smart city as “an urbanised area where multiple sectors cooperate to achieve sustainable outcomes through the analysis of contextual, real-time information shared among sector-specific information and operational technology systems.”
It says that, while investment in IoT hardware is fundamental for smart cities, the real revenue opportunity for technology and services providers (TSPs) is in the services and analytics sector. “We expect that by 2020, many IoT TSPs will have grown their hardware revenues through services and software by more than 50 percent,” said Tratz-Ryan.
“Smart cities represent a great revenue opportunity for technology and services providers (TSPs), but providers need to start to plan, engage and position their offerings now.”
Gartner also estimates that smart-home security and safety will represent the second-largest service market by revenue in 2017, and that by 2020, the smart healthcare and fitness market will have grown to nearly $US38 billion.
More detailed analysis is available in the Gartner report “Smart Cities Will Include 10 Billion Things by 2020 — Start Now to Plan, Engage and Position Offerings”. Additional analysis on the impact of the IoT is available in the Gartner Special Report “The Internet of Things Enables Digital Business,” a research collection focused on how the IoT will create new opportunities and challenges for enterprises.
