IoT to grow to $2T global market in 2017, says report

Market news | February 8, 2017

By Rich Pell

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And Gartner sees the market growing more strongly in the years to come. The number of things connected to the Internet is growing at more than 30 percent a year at present but will surge in 2020 nearly doubling in a single year to 20 billion, according to market research firm Gartner.

Gartner reckons the IoT installed base was about 6.4 billion units in 2016 and that it will climb by 31 percent to 8.4 billion units. The total spending in 2017 on creating those end-points and providing services based on them will be almost $2 trillion in 2017.

**Table 1: Installed base of IoT units by category (Millions of units). Source: Gartner**

It has also looked at the market by geography and Greater China, North America and Western Europe are driving deployment of IoT and will represent 67 percent of the installed base in 2017, the market researcher said.

Consumer applications are set to represent 63 percent of the IoT installed base in 2017 or about 5.2 billion units.

Next: Spending

“Aside from automotive systems, the applications that will be most in use by consumers will be smart TVs and digital set-top boxes, while smart electric meters and commercial security cameras will be most in use by businesses,” said Peter Middleton, research director at Gartner, in a statement.

**Table 2: IoT endpoint spending by category (Millions of dollars). Source: Gartner**

However, from 2018 onwards, cross-industry devices, such as those targeted at smart buildings, including LED lighting, HVAC and physical security systems, will take the lead as connectivity is driven into higher-volume, lower cost devices. In 2020, cross-industry devices will reach 4.4 billion units, while vertical-specific devices will amount to 3.2 billion units.

In 2017 the use of connected things among businesses will drive $964 billion in hardware spending while consumer applications will amount to $725 billion. By 2020, hardware spending from both segments will reach almost $3 trillion, Gartner reckons.