The number of connected Internet of things (IOT) devices, sensors and actuators will reach over 46 billion units globally in 2021.
This is according to a new report from Juniper Research, which notes this 200% increase in IOT devices from 2016 will be driven in large part by a reduction in the unit costs of hardware.
However, the research cautioned that both providers and end-users will face tremendous challenges when considering IOT deployments at scale.
"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," explains Juniperresearch author Steffen Sorrell.
Juniper identified key areas where disruption is needed, such as spatiotemporal analytics and intelligent systems able to run on less powerful machines (e.g. routers).
Gartner estimates that 4 billion connected things will be in use in the consumer sector in 2016, and this number will reach 13.5 billion in 2020.
"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. Aside from connected cars, consumer uses will continue to account for the greatest number of connected things, while enterprise will account for the largest spending," reveals Jim Tully, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner.
Global market research firm TrendForce predicts the IOT market will continue to bring changes to business models and create new innovations in services across industries.
Jimmy Liu, TrendForce IOT analyst, says: "The traditional IT structure of an enterprise does not have the capacity to deal with the explosive growth of data coming from the market.
"Hence, more companies will be focusing on revamping their IT structures. At the same time, the field of artificial intelligence is again attracting significant public attention due to advances in deep learning algorithms. In the near future, AI systems using sophisticated algorithms not only will be able to help humans make complex decisions, but also achieve intelligent automation of tasks."
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