IoT, 30 billion connected devices by 2025

Investments in the IoT in Europe continue to grow and by the end of this year will exceed 200 billion dollars. The forecasts are very reassuring and promise a double-digit growth by 2025. IDC Group that also analyzed the global IoT market, highlighting that growth trends remain constant despite the pandemics, presents this data.

This year the main spending will be related to modules and sensors (hardware), followed by services category, quite a critical cost item for the companies. However, the software applications serving to organize and access a variety of structured data will show the highest growth rate in the following years.

When it comes to the impact on the various industries, the consumer sector will absorb ​the largest portion of the investments thanks to the solutions that automate and improve some part of the domestic routine and everyday interactions between humans. The second biggest industry is manufacturing and supply chain control and plant diagnostics applications. Big hopes are also laid on the healthcare sector enabling remote control of staying-at-home patients with a chronic disease.

Regarding the volumes of connected things, it is estimated that there will be around 30 billion worldwide that equals 4 devices per person. Such a capillary distribution will mean a profound change for all of us, both on personal and professional level and will lead to becoming increasingly connected and digital.

Just think about how our houses have changed with the arrival of innovative services that are based on the intelligent outlets, voice assistants, buzzers, videogames and thermostats connected to the Internet. However, the biggest change will happen when the datacenters will fulfill and leverage the potential of these devices at an industrial ​

The IoT trackers will also become more and more widespread and according to ABI Research the number of IoT trackers will reach 68 million units in 5 years: consumer devices for the households and household appliances but also devices for monitoring health state and trackers for children movements, elderly and pets.

Zooming in on Italy according to the Internet of Things Observatory Management School of Politecnico di Milano the turnover generated by the IoT market is around 6 billion euro. A small decline of 3 % was noticed due to Covid-19 however the impact is quite limited with respect to the 24% growth that was detected in 2019 and 35% increase in 2018.

In regards to the Unipol Group and IoT, UnipolTech is the first telematics service provider in Europe with its installed telematics boxes. The telematics boxes use the innovative technology, designed and built by UnipoTech and which transmit data from the vehicles fully respecting the GDPR.

It is also interesting to notice that the forecast regards a very important and very popular topic nowadays, which is environmental sustainability: according to the report of Transforma Insights and 6GWorld on behalf of InterDigital, by 2030, the development of the IoT will allow to save 8 times the energy it consumes. Technology will allow to reduce electricity consumption by more than 1,6 petawatt/hour (PWh), which is enough to support energy consumption for more than 136,5 million households per year.

Furthermore, by virtue of the connected devices it will be possible to save almost 230 billion cubic meters of water considering the better functioning of the intelligent water supply. This is only a part of examples of the advantages that can come true in the next years, a well-organized process control over the enormous quantity of generated data will be required reinforced by the existent legislation at a society level.