Sparking the Internet of Things Embedded Device Renaissance

Analysts at ABI Research estimate the number of developers involved in the Internet of Things will reach 1.7 million globally by the end of 2014 – with the broader Internet of Things embedded ecosystem forecast to surpass 3 million developers in 2019.

“Currently, the IoT activity is largely polarized between hobbyists and makers at one end, and enterprise-level developers at the other end,” ABI principal analyst Aapo Markkanen explained.

“But owing to a combination of various enablers, we can also see a growing number of startups taking the commercial plunge and starting to productize the concepts they’ve prototyped earlier with [development boards such as the] Arduino. That productization, however, can be an extremely difficult feat to pull off, requiring very diverse skill sets.”

According to Markkanen, the core enablers for productization comprise purpose-built cloud platforms and development kits, which are making the IoT accessible to developers who may differ greatly in terms of their resources and commitment.

“There are also several other, more indirect enablers that will be critical for the IoT’s evolution,” he said.

 “These include sensors and sensor engines, affordable 3D printers, as well as crowdfunding platforms. Collectively, all these building blocks could eventually translate into a perfect storm of hardware innovation.”

Sparking an Internet of Things Embedded Hardware Renaissance

ABI Research practice director Dan Shey expressed similar sentiments.

“After all the talk about Internet of Things hardware being irreversibly commoditized and software ‘eating the world’ we may be actually soon witnessing a countertrend in the technology industry, driven by the consumer IoT,” he added.

“Consumers will shun away from anything that is not inspiringly designed and robustly produced, so any consumer-facing IoT play needs to deliver on both of those fronts if it’s to have any traction. In this sense, the IoT could represent the beginning of an Internet of Things hardware renaissance.”

With this Internet of Things embedded hardware renaissance and a projected 3 million IoT developers by 2019, how we connect the billions of Internet of Things devices across the globe is another consideration that needs to be taken into account. These are the types of Internet of Things challenges we’ve solved at PubNub. With over two hundred million connected devices connected to our global data stream network in fourteen data centers, we average 50 to 60 thousand transactions per second, peaking at over 3 million.

By 2020, it’s estimated that there will be between 20 and 30 billion connected devices on the Earth. As a result, how we connect those devices should take precedence as the IoT field grows exponentially.

This is a guest post from Atmel, and was originally published to the Atmel blog on June 10, 2014. Atmel Corporation is a worldwide leader in the design and manufacture of microcontrollers, capacitive touch solutions, advanced logic, mixed-signal, nonvolatile memory and radio frequency (RF) components.