Report Title: The Internet of Things: Promises and Perils of a Disruptive Technology
Rapporteur: Matej TONIN (Slovenia)
Year: 2017
The Internet of Things (IoT) has rightly been a technology buzzword for several years: it has the potential to disrupt modern life as we know it. Today, more connected objects exist on the planet than people. In 2016, while the world’s human population stood at 7.4 billion people, the number of connected devices reached about 16.28 billion (Cisco, 2016). By 2020, between 30 and 60 billion devices will be connected worldwide (Vermesan et al., 2015; Howard, 2016). The IoT’s economic impact already totals about USD 2 trillion annually, and by 2025, the global IoT market could account for USD 4 to 12.8 trillion per year (Fischer, 2015; Al-Fuhaqa et al., 2015).
