The billion IoT devices figure was pointed out by Steve Mollenkopf, CEO of Qualcomm, at the company's last earnings call on 20 April.

Ignacio Contreras, Director of Marketing at Qualcomm, who manages PR and analyst relations for the automotive and Internet of Things (IoT) businesses told us that that Qualcomm adds up its numbers based on chip (ASIC) shipments IoT areas including home control and automation, home entertainment, cameras and drones, voice and music, wearables and smart cities/ industrial IoT.

Every connected bulb, connected speaker, connected camera or drone or wearable watch or wristband will count into this number.

The smart cities people at Qualcom told us the ways they were helping big campuses and towns to provide better service.

These numbers are set to increase as the market is still in its infancy. Some initial problems like lack of a ubiquitous standard are yet to be solved. This market is set to grow and with every new generation companies try to increase the battery life, make device intercommunication easier (AllJoyn) and increase the market share.

One of the problems of IoT market is that every mayor company has its own idea how to overcome these problems. Qualcomm, Intel, Samsung and everyone else have come up with their own solutions that don’t necessary play well with the competitor's hardware or software.