Global shipments of wireless Internet of Things (IoT) devices will reach 1 billion this year, 60% of which will be bought for enterprise and industry use, rather than consumers, according to Deloitte.
"Hardware sales will generate about £6.5 billion and associated services will be worth around £45 billion," the consultancy predicted on Tuesday, adding that by the end of 2015, the installed base of IoT devices will reach approximately 3 billion.
IoT was one of several topics included in Deloitte’s telecoms, media and technology (TMT) predictions for 2015, published this week.
The company also expects that global smartphone sales will reach 1 billion for the first time this year, generating almost £200 billion.
"The number of people with smartphones is expected to increase from 1.8 billion to 2.2 billion this year, with nearly a quarter (24%) of adults planning to buy one," said Ed Shedd, head of Deloitte’s U.K. TMT practice, in a statement.
Deloitte expects sales will continue to grow until at least 2018.
Turning its attention to mobile payments, Deloitte predicted that 2015 will be a turning point for the use of near-field communications (NFC) for carrying out transactions on handsets. By the end of the year, 30 million NFC-capable phones will make at least one in-store contactless payment per month, compared to 2.5 million in mid-2014.
"This technology is likely to exist alongside other means of payments for some time yet," noted Ed Marsden, lead telecoms partner at Deloitte.
In addition, Deloitte also warned of a widening gap in broadband speed between those households connected to the fastest-available service and households connected to basic broadband.
In many markets, the top 10% of homes may have 10 times or greater the average connection speed of those in the bottom 10%, Deloitte said. "The variation in speed has major implications for the audience for any online service, whether they are consumer or enterprise."
