IoT Devices Set to Surge 200% by 2021, Juniper Research Forecasts Rapid Expansion

Advances in low‑cost hardware are accelerating the Internet of Things (IoT), with the number of connected devices projected to triple by 2021.

Juniper Research’s analysis, titled The Internet of Things: Consumer, Industrial & Public Services 2016-2021, estimates that global IoT deployments will reach 46 billion units by 2021—a 200 % increase from 2016.

The growth is driven primarily by industrial and public‑sector adoption, which the report forecasts will rise at an average annual rate of more than 24 % over the next five years.

However, the rapid scaling of actuators, sensors, and other IoT devices presents significant operational challenges. “The platform landscape is flourishing,” says Steffen Sorrell, lead author of the Juniper study. “Yet most analytics and database systems are not yet architected to handle the Big Data 2.0 era that IoT brings.”

Key areas that require disruption include spatiotemporal analytics and intelligent edge systems capable of running on low‑power hardware such as routers.

Security Concerns Intensify

Juniper’s research also highlights a widening threat landscape. The past year saw high‑profile distributed denial‑of‑service attacks orchestrated by botnets, and the next wave of risks is expected to include physical asset sabotage, corporate data breaches, and personal data theft.

Enterprises are already investing heavily in IoT security, and a recent spring study by MarketResearchReports.biz predicts a compound annual growth rate of nearly 55 % in the IoT security market over the next year.

While corporate and industrial players are prioritizing defenses against unauthorized access, data misuse, network disruption, and data corruption, Juniper warns that consumer IoT security remains significantly under‑invested, creating a lucrative target for attackers.