The $14.4 Trillion Future of the Internet of Things

We were promised hover cars - this is true. But if our present reality is not the future you had once imagined, you can take comfort in the fact that something else is coming in place of hover cars: massive amounts of money.

That's according to Jens Erik Gould at The Financialist, at least. To be specific, Gould points to Cisco Systems' figure of 14.4 trillion USD, which is expected to be generated over the next decade from a variety of innovations brought on by the Internet of Things. Medical products, wearables, and industrial and manufacturing devices are just a few of the markets expected to explode. All the money you sink into your freshly-IoT'd house really adds up, right?

The progression of the traditional Internet over the last decades is a signifier of the impact IoT will have, Gould suggests. He points to the increasing number of Internet-connected computers:

In the year 2000, when desktops were still the computer of choice, there were 1 billion devices connected to the Internet worldwide. Then came laptops and all things mobile, and that figure increased tenfold to 10 billion connections by 2010. It’s on track to reach 50 billion units by 2020. There were fewer Internet-connected devices than there were people in 2005, but trend lines suggest there will be 3.5 connected devices per person by 2015 and almost 7 by 2020. At the same time, the number of mobile broadband access points is set to increase to 8 billion by 2019 from 2 billion today, and Swedish communications giant Ericsson predicts that the amount of data sent by the average smartphone will quadruple between now and then.

So, maybe this is where those 4.5 million IoT jobs are going to come from by 2020:

It's an interesting look at the economic future of IoT: lots of money, lots of jobs, and a whole bunch of Things.