The next small thing will be much bigger than anyone thinks
the Internet of Things, is changing our world in unimaginable ways.
The universe of connected devices, known as the Internet of Things, is changing our world in unimaginable ways. A clue to the scale of coming change can be picked up in the numbers being bandied about for the number of connected devices we will see by 2020. Cisco, Ericsson, Gartner and McKinsey have all forecast between 20billion and 50billion "things" connected to the internet by then. It can be argued, however, that all of these seers have got it hopelessly wrong. Not because the number is too big, but because it is far too conservative. Already, more than two billion people are using smartphones globally. Not only is that number expected to double in the next five years, but a high proportion of people will be using more than one smartphone. More than a billion smartphones are sold every year, so these numbers, too, may be conservative. And that is only the most visible of connected devices. The market for RFID tags, which allow almost any objects to communicate their presence or...
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