IoT to have 75 billion 'connected' devices by 2025

Fragmentation has plagued the Internet of Things market for a while now. There are still many competing standards in play today, but there's also more effort than ever before to reduce fragmentation and allow interoperability. These efforts will lead to a doubling of ‘connected’ devices between 2015 and 2020, according to an IHS white paper on IoT.

There were 15.4 billion “connected” devices in 2015, and IHS projects there will be 30.7 billion IoT devices in 2020, jumping to 75.4 billion by 2025. If the projections pan out, the IoT market will see incredible growth over the next decade. It already seems like everything is getting connected to the internet, these days.

The market still faces a number of challenges, though, thanks to the complexity of connecting so many disparate devices and systems. The IHS paper describes some of these challenges which arise from a variety of issues that include supply chains and device compatibility. OEMs often need relationships with a variety of radio frequency component suppliers and mobile operators around the world to ensure their products will work on a variety of networks. Also, while fragmentation in standards is being reduced, device makers are still left with a choice on what wireless connectivity standards to support. Even then, having compatible standards does not itself guarantee two different devices will be compatible with each other. There is other product testing that needs to happen.

The IHS report singles out Huawei’s Ocean Connect IoT Platform as one platform that could dominate the future of IoT. However, IHS does not list many features that really distinguish Huawei's service offerings from other platforms. Many companies are competing in this space. IHS does note that Huawei is not competing against suppliers using its IoT platform, though, which could be an asset. Google and Microsoft have upset some suppliers in the past by getting into hardware. However, Huawei may eventually find that there are significant advantages to being able to control the full user experience from software to hardware, and the company is already producing smartphones and telecom products.

Platforms aside, smaller manufacturers can keep things simple with wireless standards by using common standards like Z-Wave, ZigBee, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. This is what most China suppliers do today for IoT products. This keeps them from having to ensure compatibility on a variety of mobile networks across the globe from various cellular service providers. Z-Wave and ZigBee also appear to be growing as popular connectivity standards.