Commentary
45 Billion Connected Devices Projected
- by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, August 28, 2017
The number of Internet-connected devices is nowhere near its ceiling.
There already are more than 12 billion IoT devices, which may seem trivial in years to come.
The number of connected devices will grow to more than 45 billion by 2023, according to a new forecast by Frost & Sullivan. That’s an annual growth rate of 20%.
In the consumer marketplace, Amazon, Apple, Google, Samsung and Microsoft all have intensified efforts to dominate the personal assistance rate to control homes and the profitable consumer IoT and artificial intelligence sectors, states the report, which suggests that future consolidation will be essential.
That consolidation is likely to be around large platforms that provide building blocks with smaller vendors developing applications.
“While it is impossible to create standards across all the industries that are part of IoT, there is need for standardization around how data is collected, stored and communicated across different industries and applications,” stated Dilip Sarangan, research director at Frost & Sullivan.
The study also included five predictions relating to the Internet of Things for the next 12 to 18 months. The predictions are: google
- Transition from connected devices to the use of cognitive or predictive computing and sentient tools
- Use of artificial intelligence to transform smart devices so that they react to changes in the environment without human intervention
- Increased commoditization of platforms
- Boom in drone delivery and use of drones to monitor remote wildfires, cell towers and electric lines
- Unsecure devices and malware escalate cyber-attacks, making IoT a national security hazard
At 12 billion connected devices, we’re still in the early days of the Internet of Things.
Chuck Martin is Editor of the AI & IoT Daily at MediaPost and writes the daily Connected Thinking column. He is a NY Times Business bestselling author and his latest book is “Digital Transformation 3.0” (The New Business-to-Consumer Connections of The Internet of Things.) He is CEO of Net Future Institute and a frequent keynote speaker internationally. Follow him on Twitter @chuckmartin and contact him at Chuck@MediaPost.com.
Use of artificial intelligence to transform smart devices so that they react to changes in the environment without human intervention.
Keep developing more things to eliminate humans, that will include the jobs needed for people to waste their money on these billions of dollars of "Convenience"
Love that this discussion is brewing. I’d love to provide some additional thoughts here - and please excuse the multiple comments. Everything I wanted to express won’t fit in one comment! (I need a late-night editor!)
Mark, I have to say that we probably agree that AR applications will become more commonplace than VR, especially for daily-use or other apps that have real utility. VR is great for what it can provide - immersion that leads to an ability to create deep empathy, extended storytelling and situations when we really do want to give an experience where we take users away to a different place and/or time. That’s not always practical and that is why we think AR has such promise.
We believe in the power of VR and understand when it can be used to provide incredible experiences for our clients - whether we are putting together a branded entertainment concept, producing a music video in VR, creating experiences that help people empathize with others that have medical conditions or as a means to train a clients’ workforce. We have heard from clients and others in the industry that there can be apprehension towards investing heavily in VR experiences ahead of consumer adoption or widespread acceptance of VR hardware unless there is a way to better understand the impact VR is having on their audience and there are methods to quantify the value of virtual reality experiences. This was the genesis of the analytics platform for us - and we didn’t want to just measure behavior. We felt to make this a killer app and to solve that problem of measurement, it needed to also have a heavy biometric component that would allow us to gauge emotion and tie it back to the experience. That’s what we’ve created and it really pretty cool to see all of it come together in a way that doesn’t just sound good, but uses real science to create insights that will lead to the design of better experiences and a data-driven means to show how VR can impact users.
Humans still will be needed to essentially program the technology, Mark.