The market for intelligent systems is estimated to grow from 19% of all major electronic system unit shipments in 2010 to more than one third of all systems by 2015, according to a report on the emerging intelligent systems market from International Data Corporation (IDC).

Intelligent systems use high-performance microprocessors, connectivity, and high level operating systems.

According to the new report, ‘Intelligent Systems: The Next Big Opportunity’, the market for intelligent systems is developing rapidly, with over 1.8 billion units and more than $1trillion in revenue today.

IDC said that by 2015, the market will double to nearly 4 billion units and more than $2 trillion in revenue. Overall, embedded systems is expceted to consume nearly 14.5 billion microprocessor cores in 2015.

The report also indicates that momentum will accelerate beyond 2015 as the ecosystem of hardware, software, and services vendors bring more intelligence into systems through higher levels of performance and programmability, more forms of connectivity, increasing penetration of sensors, and a growing base of cloud-based applications and data.

IDC Semiconductor research vice-president Mario Morales said the new generation of intelligent systems and its ecosystem will have broad reach and establish the next wave in computing over the next five years.

"Cloud-based applications and analytic workloads will extract significant business value from all of the end-user data," Morales said.