According to a just-published report from industry analyst firm NanoMarkets titled, "Markets for Sensors in the Internet-of-Things – 2014-2021," the market for sensors sold for consumer applications in the Internet-of-Things (IoT) is expected to reach $11.4 billion in revenues by 2019.
In 2013 NanoMarkets published the first industry analysis covering the new opportunities for sensors brought about by the rise of IoT. In this report, we bring the consumer side of the story up to date. The report contains granular eight-year forecasts by application type including home automation, media and gaming, healthcare and automotive, with breakouts of the kinds of sensors and hubs used in each and in both volume and value terms. There is also a revenue forecast by geography. The report covers of six types of sensor: light, heat, touch/pressure, motion, acoustic and gas/chemical. The report also discusses the strategies and products of firms that are already hooked into the opportunities that IoT sensors present.
From the Report
The demand for IoT sensor devices is expected to be driven by their ability to identify, analyze, and make decisions about the world around us, without involving us in the active decision-making. Thus IoT is expected to carry on the tradition of automation in the past; freeing up people to do things they would rather be doing.
The impact of these trends will be different for different applications. Thus, according to NanoMarkets, the value of IoT sensors in the automotive sector – negligible now – is expected to reach 1.0 billion by 2019, while the relatively established area of media and gaming is expected to grow at a much more modest rate. While the revenue opportunities for IoT sensors are spread across many kinds of sensors, the report notes that more than half of the revenues in this sector -- $5.8 billion – come from sensor hubs.
NanoMarkets sees these numbers as highly encouraging for the sensor industry, but warns that there is a real danger that sensor firms may overreach, throwing far too much money into IoT sensor endeavors. The report warns that consumer-oriented IoT sensors must be very low price have to come up with clever new ways of manufacturing sensors, which means that sensor makers will have to come up with improved ways to manufacture sensors.
The same thinking also raises the question of who is most likely to capture the sensor-related value in the IoT value chain. There is at least a possibility, we believe, that this value will either be captured by the IoT software firms or (even more likely) the giant consumer-oriented firms such as Google and Cisco who have been pushing the IoT concept. If this were to happen, then the sensor industry may find the IoT doesn't change things from their current position of being suppliers of commodity products.
