IDG's Agam Shah recently reported that every Windows 10 device will feature APIs "for developers to work with sensors."

"The company has been incorporating a universal sensor driver set so Windows 10 can exploit a slew of environmental, biometric, proximity and motion sensors on devices," he explained.

As Shah notes, Redmond hopes to usher in an era of "new functionality" for PCs, smartphones, tablets, gadgets and electronics running the latest version of Microsoft's stalwart operating system.

"Device makers could add barometer, pollution, ultraviolet, temperature, altitude and other sensors to Windows 10 devices," he wrote. "[In addition], motion detection sensors will be able to track activities such as the number of steps users take in a day and exchange data easily with other Windows 10 devices. The motion detection sensors will also take into account where devices are - on pockets, in hand or in bag - to ensure accurate measurements."

Commenting on the above-mentioned report, James Tringali, a senior systems engineer at Rambus, told us that Redmond has clearly embraced the Internet of Things (IoT) sensor explosion. The lower the plug-in barrier for sensor developers, says Tringali, the better.

"In addition to supporting today's sensors straight out of the OS box, it appears as if Microsoft has given a lot of consideration into putting as-yet-unthought-of sensors into play. Rapid adoption of unanticipated technologies will be an important factor as novel sensors, such as Rambus lensless smart sensors (LSS), make their way into the IoT market," he explained.

"Redmond will also be broadly deploying Windows 10 in the traditional PC domain as well as across a variety of Maker and development boards, including the Raspberry Pi 2, Qualcomm's DragonBoard 410c and Intel's Atom-based MinnowBoard-Max. This should allow sensor devs to quickly integrate their technology into multiple levels of compute hierarchy."

As we've previously discussed on Rambus Press, the rapidly evolving IoT has prompted the semiconductor industry to place an emphasis on more efficiently capturing, securing, moving and analyzing an increasing volume of digital data. To be sure, Ron Miller ofTechCrunch recently described the IoT as a network of smart sensors tasked with collecting data.

"As the sensors grow ever cheaper, and the network grows ever larger, the more data we can collect to make ever more intelligent decisions (at least in theory)," he opined.

Indeed, simple-function, sensor-laden endpoints are likely to become ubiquitous as new layers of smart infrastructure go online. Each environmentally aware 'lite' endpoint will be tasked with capturing, analyzing and transferring data to various devices and the cloud.

Unsurprisingly, analysts at IC Insights have projected that sensor shipments will surge with a CAGR of 11.4 percent (between 2014 and 2019), culminating in a total of 19.1 billion sensors by 2019. Meanwhile, suppliers are expected to ship 12.9 billion sensors during 2015, a 16 percent gain compared to 2014. All told, sensor sales are slated to reach $6.1 billion, up 7 percent from 2014.

Interested in learning more? You can check out our Rambus lensless smart sensor story archive here.

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