Global Spending on IoT Deployments Seen Approaching $1.4 Trillion by 2021

Global spending on IoT deployments is expected to grow 16.7 percent year over year in 2017, reaching just over $800 billion, IDC said in a Wednesday report. By 2021, global IoT spending is expected to total nearly $1.4 trillion “as organizations continue to invest in the hardware, software, services, and connectivity that enable the IoT,” IDC said. "The discussion about IoT has shifted away from the number of devices connected," it said. "The true value of IoT is being realized when the software and services come together to enable the capture, interpretation, and action on data produced by IoT endpoints.” Hardware will be the largest spending category until the last year of the five-year forecast, when the faster-growing services category will overtake it, IDC said.