According to a forecast by the Gartner Group, 6.4 billion connected devices will be in use worldwide in 2016 and, if that rate of annual growth is maintained there will be 20.8 billion by 2020. By 2016, 5.5 million new devices will be added to the IoT every day.

The numbers of installed devices in the consumer sector will continue to outstrip the installed base of business devices (see table 1). Today there are double the numbers of connected IoT devices that are categorized as consumer products (3,023 million units) as there are in vertical specific businesses (where 1,065 million units are in use). By 2020 the number of installed consumer IoT devices will have multiplied fourfold, while the vertical market specific devices will have grown by a relatively small rate of 150%.

“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,” said Gartner analyst Jim Tully.

The main categories of service will be in the design, install and operate IoT systems. Connectivity services (through communications service providers) and consumer services will grow at a faster pace.

Connected cars aside, consumer uses will continue to account for the greatest number of connected things, while the enterprise will account for the largest spending, according to Gartner.

The Enterprise IoT market will split into generic products that can be used anywhere, and more specialized devices that only work in specific vertical markets, such as low power devices for police cars that have no application anywhere else.

“By 2020, cross-industry devices will dominate the number of connected things used in the enterprise,” said Tully.

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