2015: Global Investment in Internet of Things Heats up.

The Internet of Things (IoT), with an ambitious vision of creating smart cities, is poised to become a trillion dollar industry, according to CISCO CEO, John Chambers. Inking deals with some of the largest metropolitan areas globally, cities in Chile, Germany, Spain, and the United States are expected to receive a technological makeover, with an estimated 1.1 Billion connected units sold and an expected rise to 2.7 billion units by 2017.

On a slightly smaller scale are smart homes. In 2015 alone, according to business Insider, Smart Home sales will total $61 Billion. Forecasts, however, expect it to grow to an astounding $490 billion industry by 2019. Google’s focus on smart homes took off in 2014 with a $3.2 billion deal with thermostat, air quality and alarm manufacturer Nest. They then acquired smart home security specialist Dropcam and networking device developer Revolv. “Smart Hub” by Revolv provided a solution for the industry’s biggest problem, how to get all the devices to communicate with each other, while Dropcam takes care of security.

An innate ancillary benefit to Internet of Things is the massive amount of data to be collected, analyzed and utilized. Actually utilizing it however, requires immense computer power. This is where IBM comes in.

IBM CEO, Ginni Rometty, announced it would invest $3 billion over several years to fund a new Internet of Things business unit. In conjunction with IBM fast growing cloud business, their Internet Of Things vision will become a legitimate market driver. Together with IBM existing Watson supercomputer and Big Data capabilities, making the transition to becoming the leading IoT Data Management is only natural.

Even government entities are taking note of the potential benefits of Internet of Things, for both economical and infrastructural purposes. The two fastest growing economy China and India are looking towards IoT to enhance their economy.

Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, is considering incentives to VC-funded start-ups to work on Internet of Things Technologies with a core focus on memory storage devices, processors, sensors, power devices and solar panels. It aims to attract early stage funding as well as tapping into the huge potential of this sector to boost production and exports.

In China, Beijing Municipal Government, Institute of Automation of Chinese Academy of Sciences and Intel Corporation announced a joint agreement to establish a “China Intel Internet of Things” Joint Labs to collaborate on IoT related core technology research, development and business model innovation. The 3 organization will invest 200 million RMB over the next five years for this project.

An overarching theme of the Internet of Things is the need for a simple all in one control interface for the user. This is where mobile app developers comes in. What is the use of having everything connected if the controls for it is complicated? An app on your smart device can easily solve it. An expected surge in demand for iOS and Android developers will surely follow the rise of Internet of Things. Almost everyone with a smartphone will be able to remotely control their network of connected units and truly enter the Internet of Things.