Although the Internet of Things (IoT) has sparked serious buzz in the last 12 months, it’s often difficult to separate 
vague conversations focused on potential from those fixated on real-world results. But according to a new earnings report released by US tech giant Intel, IoT generated $US2.1 billion in 2014. This is proof that the rise of connected devices is no longer a speculative phenomenon, but a shift whose impact is already sending ripples across industries.
The earnings report, which was unveiled at the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (CES 2015) revealed that Intel’s IoT business was growing ten times faster than its Mobile and Communications division – the department it’s always perceived as its core business – according to a January 2014 article in The Verge. Intel specialises in sensors, wireless radios and miniature processers and recently announced plans to roll out its Curie module, a piece of button-sized hardware that can turn anything you own into a smart device by combining a sensor hub, Bluetooth connection and a processor powered by Intel’s state-of-the-art Quark technology.
IoT offers a compelling opportunity for the legacy tech companies that conceived the PC industry in the late eighties and nineties but struggled to stay afloat amid the move towards smartphones, tablets and cloud computing that are hallmarks of The Social Web. In January 2015, Business Insider Australia listed the long-term sales relationships that exist between legacy tech companies, businesses and governments, the resources to provide hands-on installation services and customer support and an emphasis on secure infrastructure as central to this transition.
Business Insider also projects that there will be more than twice as many IoT devices as smartphones, tablets and PCs by 2019. In the same year, the market is tipped to generate $US 600 billion for companies that offer IoT-related products and services.
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