The Internet of Things (IoT) has exploded over these past three years, and according to Gartner research, 25 billion connected “things” will be connected to the Internet by 2020. With the influx of smart technology, IPV6 will provide enough IP addresses to more than sufficiently cover the evolving digital life of consumers. The Smart Homes sector alone is predicted to be a $490 billion market.

But consumer-brand manufacturers will not be the sole beneficiaries of the IoT explosion. Gartner predicts that the manufacturing, healthcare, and insurance industries are the top three industries positioned to profit the most from the IoT sector.

IoT has given our physical inanimate world a “digital nervous system”, a term coined by Bill Gates & Judith Dayhoff. The vision anticipates a deluge of information generated from smart appliances to smart infrastructures. This already emerging hyper-connected environment will monitor, measure, and automates tasks and increase the demand for big data analytics. The following infographic provides a sneak peek into the exponential expansion of the IoT movement.