50 Billion Connected Things 2020

Ericsson the world's leading provider of technology and services to telecom operators envisions over 50 billion connected devices in 2020. "In the future everything that will be benefit from being connected will be connected", said President and CEO Hans Vestberg in April 2010, when he met the shareholders in his new position for the first time at the Annual General Meeting of Shareholders in Stockholm. For every seven people on the face of the earth, there are now five mobile connections. In June 2010 the world passed the 5 billion subscription mark. 

Infonaut: ASIMO@AEC 2010

Connected Things 

• 30 billion connected consumer devices (3 billion x 10 connected devices)
• 1 billion vehicles
• 3 billion utility meters
• 100 billion embedded processors shipped (cumulative) 

Example from Sweden

Based on this vision Swedish telecom operator Telia expects 300 million connected devices in 2020, reports NyTeknik. Head of Telia Reseach Lars Klasson lists cameras, security alarms, washing machines and surveillance cameras as examples. Of Sweden's 12,2 million mobile subscriptions about 2 million (14%) devices, mostly utility meters, are already connected via the mobile network, but also alarms, cameras and vehicles are mobile connected.
What about Connected Robots?

Connected robots are not mentioned but will amount for some 100 millions in 2020-2035.  Here some predictions from Japan and South Korea. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) expects the Japanese market for service robots based on domestic production will grow to US$ 12 billion by 2020 and US$ 60 billion by 2035. This means 24 to 120 million US$ 500 service robots.
"One Robot in Every Home"

In 2007 Bill Gates envisioned "one robot in every home". The Korean government has already a stated goal of one robot in every Korean Kindergarten by 2013 and one robot in every home by 2020. 
If service robotics takes a similar path as the mobile phone did in the 20th century we may have 5 billion mobile robots around year 2030. 
The Unknown Unknown

• What will this mean for society and our daily life? 
• What are the great opportunities, what are the great risks? 
• Are we prepared to live with billions of connected machines? 
• What questions haven´t been asked yet? 
• Any blindspots or tabus?