The number of "things" connected to the Internet will increase by 30 percent from this year to next, according to market research firm Gartner, to reach a total of 6.4 billion, a total that will balloon to 20.8 billion by 2020.
Approximately 4 billion of those Internet-connected things will be used by consumers in 2016 and about 13.5 billion will be for consumer use in 2020, according to the company. That's up from just over 3 billion in 2015 and about 2.28 billion in 2014.
"Gartner estimates that the Internet of Things (IoT) will support total services spending of $235 billion in 2016, up 22 percent from 2015," according to a news release. "Services are dominated by the professional category (in which businesses contract with external providers in order to design, install and operate IoT systems), however connectivity services (through communications service providers) and consumer services will grow at a faster pace."
In terms of spending on hardware, consumer uses will also make up a large chunk at $546 billion in 2016, but the majority of spending will be on things for use in specific industry verticals, at $612 billion. Spending on cross-industry connected devices is forecast by the company to reach $201 billion. However, consumer spending on IoT hardware will outpace vertical-specific spending throughout the latter half of the decade, according to Gartner's forecast, to overtake it by 2020. That year the company predicts consumers will spend a whopping $1.5 trillion on IoT hardware, while companies will spend just $911 billion on vertical-specific IoT hardware and $566 billion on cross-industry IoT hardware.