Guestblog by Ana Bera
It is estimated that by 2020, there will be 50 billion IoT devices will be up and running. To put things in context, the number of connected devices in 2015 was 25 billion, which only goes to show how quickly this technology is taking off. The future is happening now, and these devices are getting smarter by the minute, through artificial intelligence and machine learning.
To get a clearer understanding of how IoT has evolved through time, let’s take a short trip down history lane.
The commercial internet has only been around since the mid-1990s, which is why IoT doesn’t necessarily have a rich history. However, there’s still an interesting story to be told about how this incredible technology came to be.
British visionary technologist, entrepreneur, and author Kevin Ashton was the first to use the term ‘’Internet of Things’’ in 1999, to describe a system where the gap between the internet and the physical world is bridged via ubiquitous sensors. Connecting ‘’things’’ to the internet? While this concept may have seemed futuristic in 1999, Kevin was definitely on to something.
In 2000, just a year after the term IoT was coined, LG introduced the world’s first internet-connected refrigerator. The device itself may have become obscure, but this holds a special place in IoT history as it was one of the first times the IoT has received recognition by a well-known company, rather than researchers.
Fast forward to the year 2010, when China became the first country to recognize the potential of IoT for future opportunities officially. This marked the first time in history that IoT was recognized by an actual government. This prompted enterprises like IBM, Cisco, and Ericsson to produce vast amounts of educational and marketing material around the subject.
Top 5 IoT Statistics:
- 26.66 billion IoT devices in 2019 were active
- By 2025 there will be 75 Billion IoT devices in the World
- 127 new devices are connected every second to the internet
- By 2020, 40% of IoT devices will be used in the healthcare industry
- Global market will grow up to 457 Billion by 2020