41.6 billion IoT devices will be generating 79.4 zettabytes of data in 2025

A new forecast from IDC estimates that there will be 41.6 billion connected IoT devices, or “things,” generating 79.4 zettabytes (ZB) of data in 2025. As the number of connected IoT devices grows, the amount of data generated by these devices will also grow. Some of this data is small and bursty, indicating a single metric of a machine’s health, while large amounts of data can be generated by video surveillance cameras using computer vision to analyze crowds of people, for example. There is an obvious direct relationship between all the “things” and the data these things create. IDC projects that the amount of data created by these connected IoT devices will see a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 28.7% over the 2018-2025 forecast period.