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The number of connected Internet of Things (IoT) devices like sensors and actuators will reach over 46 billion by 2021, a new study from Juniper Research has found.
This is a 200 per cent increase from 2016, and highlights that a deduction in unit costs for hardware will drive the number of connected devices. Industrial and public services will see the highest growth, averaging at 24 per cent annually.
The study also says that providers and consumers could face challenges when IoT is adopted at such a rapid rate.
This pace of adoption could provide problems for both end-users and suppliers Steffen Sorrell, author and senior analyst at Juniper Research, said: “The platform landscape is flourishing. However, analytics and database systems are, for the most part, not architected to handle the Big Data 2.0 era that the IoT brings.”
The research also identified routers and intelligent systems as being the main sources of disruption that the emergence of connectivity will bring.
Threats are becoming more notable, with the research noting that IoT distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) ‘botnet’ attacks increasing, but the firm states that corporate data theft and actual asset compromises will be the main goal for IoT hackers.
It is predicted that, without changes in attitude from service providers, getting an IoT project off the ground would be too difficult for non tech-savvy customers. Initiatives such as Exosite’s IoT Alliance (a large partner network) and Rubicon Labs’ flexible business models (pricing according to the value of the data in question) would be fundamental in driving market traction forward.
