Anyone's Game: Economic and Policy Implications of the Internet of Things as a Market for Services

Research suggests the future of the Internet will be defined by ubiquitous computing: a networked environment in which smart objects, called 'Things,' are imbued with identification data and micro-processing power to form an Internet of Things (IoT). Data production across the Internet continues to proliferate at exponential rates. Thus, this paper aims to provide an introductory framework for the IoT as a market for value extraction from captured data, supported by cloud computing and semantic web services. The paper outlines the technological basis for the IoT in brief, as well as assessing the current state of scholarship in this area. The IoT is then divided into four market segments by the type of end-user addressed by service providers (individuals, firms, city-government, national-government) in order to highlight and illustrate the major policy implications of this emerging services market.