MUMBAI: The number of units under Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to grow exponentially to 1.9 billion units in India by 2020 or about USD 9 billion, says a report.A rapidly growing hub for IoT solutions, the country's IoT market size in this area is expected to increase about 7 times -- from USD 1.3 billion last year to USD 9 billion by 2020, said consultancy firm Deloitte in its TMT Predictions 2017.IoT refers to the devices, other than computers and smartphones, connected to the Internet. Deloitte estimates the current number of such devices in the country to be around 60 million.The report said IoT solution deployment for digital utilities or smart cities and in the manufacturing, transport and logistics and automotive industries would drive the demand for industrial IoT applications going forward. "Though initial focus would be on providing SIMs for IoT devices and solutions, which in 2017 is expected to take off, leading to over a billion additional SIM sales in the next three years. "However, some of the leading operators, as part of the long-term play, would spin off new IoT entities that would provide them with the flexibility and reason to focus on being an end-to end IoT solution provider rather than just a connectivity provider," the report said.It expects that couple of leading operators would make significant investments to extend their IoT capabilities by providing data analytics and storage and in some cases for more specialised areas operators would enter into partnerships with companies. "These companies would provide cheaper sensors, cloud data storage, analytics, visualisation platforms providing remote monitoring, dashboards and reports, and field service platforms providing automated maintenance tickets and technical assistance," it said.

Source: Economic Times February 19, 2017 07:30 UTC