IoT is the Future — And You Can Get Started With it Now

Think that IoT (Internet of Things) is years away, and likely buoyed by too much hype? Think again. IoT is real, will be a multi-trillion dollar market within ten years — and you can get started using it today.

How big will the IoT market be? Machina Research estimates that by 2024 it will be worth $4.3 trillion. The market is already sizable, Machina says — an estimated $900 billion in 2014. And Gartner estimates that there will be 26 billion separate IoT devices in use in 2020.

If you want more evidence that IoT is real, just take a look at the companies jumping into the market. Acer, for example, has begun shifting away from the consumer market, and towards the enterprise and IoTmarket. It recently announced a PC for developers who work in the IoT market. The PC will connect to smarthome and wearable IoT products, and  be hub for analyzing data from the devices.

And SAP now has a suite of tools aimed at managing and analyzing IoT devices and data. Last month it unveiled the SAP HANA Cloud Platform for the Internet of Things. Plenty of other big companies including IBM and others are jumping in as well.

IoT encompasses countless types of products, including smart TVs, watches, sensors, and yes, even smart toothbrushes. The big money opportunity will be in the enterprise. Many consumer devices, notably watches, will gain significant enterprise use.

Develop for IoT on the Apple Watch Now

It’s easy to get started developing for what will likely be the first big enterprise IoT piece of hardware, the Apple Watch. Alpha Software’s WatchBench lets you easily create working prototype apps for Apple Watch on an iPhone. What may take many lines of native code can often be accomplished with a few lines of JavaScript calling WatchBench functions.

The prototypes it produces are much more than simple screen mockups or wireframes. They can be working code that interacts with real, remote data services, have working buttons and menus, and be polished-looking. And it won’t cost you anything — it’s available for free from the App Store.