Market research firm, Gartner forecasts that 6.4 billion connected things will be in use worldwide in 2016, up 30 percent from 2015, and will reach 20.8 billion by 2020. Of this, Gartner forecasts that 4 billion connected things will be in use in the consumer sector in 2016, and will reach 13.5 billion in 2020 .
Gartner also estimates that the Internet of Things (IoT) will support total services spending of $235 billion in 2016, up 22 percent from 2015. "IoT services are the real driver of value in IoT, and increasing attention is being focused on new services by end-user organizations and vendors," said Jim Tully, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. According to Gartner, the segment is currently dominated by business-to-business services for design, installation and operation of IoT systems, with connectivity services by communications service providers, and consumer services expected to grow at a faster rate in future.
In terms of use cases, Gartner said that apart from connected cars, consumer uses will continue to account for the greatest number of connected things, while enterprise will account for the largest spending, across both cross-industry devices and vertical-specific devices.
