Connected things that will be used by smart cities will increase to 9.7 billion by 2020 from 1.1 billion in 2015, said Gartner.
Smart homes and smart commercial buildings will represent 45 percent of total connected things in use in 2015 against 81 percent by 2020.
“Smart cities represent a great revenue opportunity for technology and services providers (TSPs), but providers need to start to plan, engage and position their offerings now,” said Bettina Tratz-Ryan, research vice president at Gartner.
Gartner said the majority of Internet of Things (IoT) spending for smart cities will come from the private sector.
Residential citizens will lead the way by increasingly investing in smart-home solutions, with the number of connected things used in smart homes to surpass 1 billion units in 2017. Connected things include smart LED lighting, healthcare monitoring, smart locks and various sensors for such things as motion detection or carbon monoxide.
Smart LED lighting will record the highest growth of IoT consumer applications, from 6 million units in 2015 to 570 million units by 2020. Light will move from being an illumination source to a communications carrier incorporating safety, health, pollution and personalized services.
There are a number of IoT deployments for on-street and off-street parking guidance, road traffic guidance and traffic flow metering. California and the U.K. are already implementing radio receivers or sensors that are embedded on a section of highway to diagnose traffic conditions in real time.
“We expect that by 2020, many IoT TSPs will have grown their hardware revenues through services and software by more than 50 percent,” said Tratz-Ryan.
Gartner also estimates that smart-home security and safety will represent the second-largest service market by revenue in 2017, and that by 2020, the smart healthcare and fitness market will have grown to nearly $38 billion.
editor@infotechlead.com
