According to the Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG), the Internet of Things (IoT) is simply the point in time when more “things or objects” were connected to the Internet than people. In 2003, there were approximately 6.3 billion people living on the planet and 500 million devices connected to the Internet. This equates to less than one (0.08) device for every person at that time.
More recently, explosive growth of smartphones and tablet PCs brought the number of devices connected to the Internet to 12.5 billion in 2010, while the world’s human population increased to 6.8 billion, making the number of connected devices per person more than 1 (1.84 to be exact) for the first time in history. Refining these numbers further, Cisco IBSG estimates IoT was “born” sometime between 2008 and 2009. Looking to the future, there will be 25 billion devices connected to the Internet by 2015 and 50 billion by 2020.
To learn more, read the newly released paper on the Internet of Things by Dave Evans, Cisco’s Chief Futurist. Also on the Cisco blog.