Internet resources: Number of computers connected to the Internet will grow

By the end of August the number of devices that are connected to the Internet is expected to pass the 5 billion milestone.

According to IMS Research company, in ten years this number will increase more than four times.

It may appear, that the second wave of growth is being driven by the cellular industry, and the global number of Internet connected cell phones has now surpassed the number of connected computers, and is growing at a much faster rate. But in fact, the potential for greatest growth comes from the third wave which will include machine-to-machine (M2M) deployments. This has the potential to go way beyond industrial applications to encompass increasingly sophisticated smart grids, networked security cameras and sensors, connected home appliances and HVAC equipment, ITS infrastructure for traffic and parking management, etc.

In the beginning of the year Cisco corporation predicted that the world traffic will be 5 times up by 2013.

Today, over 1 billion computers worldwide are regularly connected to the Internet, and this number is growing steadily. This sector continues to grow but is already over passed by cell phones. Add to this also Internet connected device sectors such as tablets, netbooks, eBook readers, Internet TVs, digital picture frames, etc. By 2020 there will be over 6 billion cell phones in use around the world, the great majority of which will be Internet connected. If you then consider that there are around 2.5 billion TVs in use today, and that many of these will be replaced with Internet connected sets, either directly or via a set-top box, you have another tremendous growth area.