Global Internet of Things (IoT) spending is expected to hit $1.2 trillion in four years’ time, a new study finds.

According to International Data Corporation’s (IDC) latest Worldwide Semi-annual Internet of Things Spending Guide, the market will experience a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.6 per cent over the 2017-2022 forecast period and reach $1.2 trillion in 2022.

As the diverse IoT market reaches broad-based critical mass, innovative offerings in analytics software, cloud technologies, and business and IT services have expanded rapidly, it states.

Forecast highlights show that the consumer sector will lead IoT spending growth with a worldwide CAGR of 19 per cent, followed closely by the insurance and healthcare provider industries.

From a total spending perspective, discrete manufacturing and transportation will each exceed $150bn in spending in 2022, making these the two largest industries for IoT spending. From an enterprise use case perspective, vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) solutions will experience the fastest spending growth (29 per cent CAGR) over the forecast period, followed by traffic management and connected vehicle security.

“The IoT market is at a turning point – projects are moving from proof of concept into commercial deployments,” said Carrie MacGillivray, group vice president, IoT, and mobility.

“Organisations are looking to extend their investment as they scale their projects, driving spending for the hardware, software, services, and connectivity required to enable IoT solutions.”

IDC reckons the intersection of multiple technology domains is one key to successfully understanding and developing a supply-side product and market development strategy. The IoT spending guide is described as an “industry-defining” market intelligence tool that details end-user adoption and spending across multiple segmentations.

“We now forecast all 20 standard IDC industries,” added Marcus Torchia, research director, customer insights & analysis. “As a result, we are proactively mapping IoT use cases that have segmentations in shared domains, such as in smart cities and digital transformation investment areas.”

The guide forecasts IoT spending for 14 technologies across 20 vertical industries in nine regions and 53 countries through 100 use cases. IDC said it was designed to help vendors clearly understand the industry-specific opportunity for IoT technologies today.

If you like this, you might be interested in reading the following:

Smart city enabling tech spending to reach $80bn

Intelligent transportation, data-driven public safety and resilient energy and infrastructure will see most spending in 2018

Read more

LPWA tech will enable millions of connections

Unlicensed LPWA IoT network technologies have given IoT operators a significant cost advantage

Read more

IoT spending forecast to reach $772bn in 2018

International Data Corporation predicts IoT hardware to be the biggest technology category with $239bn going largely towards modules and sensors

Read more