Gartner forecasts that 8.4 billion connected things will be in use worldwide in 2017, up 31 percent from 2016, and will reach 20.4 billion by 2020. Total spending on endpoints and services will reach almost $2 trillion in 2017. About 63 percent of the things installed in 2016 were Consumer Applications with 3.96 billion installs. The applications that will be most in use by consumers will be into automotive systems, smart TVs and digital set-top boxes. This figure is forecasted to soar to 5.2 billion in 2017 and 12.86 billion by the end of this decade. Business are not much far behind. Smart electric meters, commercial security cameras sre some cross-industry business application. Besides smart meter, applications tailored to specific industry verticals like manufacturing field devices, process sensors for electrical generating plants and real-time location devices for healthcare will drive the use of connected things among businesses with 1.6 billion units deployed through 2017. However, from 2018 onwards, cross-industry devices, such as those targeted at smart buildings like HVAC, physical security systems and LED lighting 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.

Table 1 IoT Units Installed Category vs Years (Millions of Units)

Category	2016	2017	2018	2020
Consumer	3,963.00	5,244.30	7,036.30	12,863.00
Business: Cross-Industry	1,102.10	1,501.00	2,132.60	4,381.40
Business: Vertical-Specific	1,316.60	1,635.40	2,027.70	3,171.00
Grand Total	6,381.80	8,380.60	11,196.60	20,415.40

 

Table 2 IoT Spending by Category vs Years (Millions of US dollars)

Category	2016	2017	2018	2020
Consumer	5,32,515	7,25,696	9,85,348	14,94,466
Business: Cross-Industry	2,12,069	2,80,059	3,72,989	5,67,659
Business: Vertical-Specific	6,34,921	6,83,817	7,36,543	8,63,662
Grand Total	13,79,505	16,89,572	20,94,880	29,25,787

Although the share of Business applications in the overall adoption of connected things is less than the general Consumer applications, the Business applications generally spend much more on connected things. In terms of hardware spending, in 2016 the Business applications spent 846 billion US dollars while the consumer applications spent 533 billion USD. This figure is projected at 964 billion US dollars for business applications and 725 billion US dollars for consumer applications. It is forecasted that the consumer application of connected things is poised to grow at a faster rate than the business counterpart. The consumer application of connected things will eventually outgrow the business application by 2020 with an estimated spending of a whopping 14 billion US dollars.