Connected living market could be worth $791bn by 2020

Technology-driven disruption is expected to continue to sweep across all industries, creating a ‘connected living’ market opportunity of over $791 billion (US$731 billion).

Frost & Sullivan predicts that by the 2020s, tens of millions of people will be connected by trillions of things and applications.

The Internet of Everything will create a world of connected living, where consumers use many different devices to use services that integrate video, voice and data services to provide ubiquitous connectivity, the firm said.

The emerging connected living market can be divided into three categories - connected home, connected work and connected city.

Connected city - encompassing segments such as e-governance, smart transport cards, e-learning and mobile banking - will make up an estimated 54% of the total connected living market by 2020.

Connected work, including mobility, communications and networking, will make up 31%, Frost said. Connected home products such as smart meters, remote monitoring systems and home health devices will contribute the remaining 15%.

Australian telecom service providers including Telstra have already made forays into the connected home segment, offering bundled communications and entertainment services. Unified communications vendors including Microsoft, Cisco and Mitel are meanwhile offering robust connected work solutions.

The research firm predicts that by 2025, there will be 3.7 billion smartphones, 700 million tablets, 420 million wearable health-related devices and 410 million smart appliances in operation worldwide.

The connected worker world will meanwhile see 90 million IP telephones, 400 million laptops and over 60 million unified communication platforms.

Image courtesy of Eric Fischer under CC