Ikea's recently announced wireless charging line of furniture is expected to jump-start a trend that will amount to 10 million sticks of high-tech furniture sold in just two years.

The worldwide consumer Wi-Fi equipment market increased 5 percent in 2014, surpassing 166 million unit shipments. "Shipments of devices which support the 802.11ac standard grew significantly last ear, representing more than 11 percent of total access point shipments," says Jake Saunders, vice president and practice director, ABI Research.

Worldwide oil production is outpacing demand, and oil prices have fallen by more than 50 percent since June 2014. Many factors - including soft demand, increasing U.S. production and diminishing storage for crude oil - suggest that the days of $100-a-barrel oil may not return. This scenario presents potentially disastrous consequences for oil and gas (O&G) firms that are not prepared to accelerate their digital transformation. Innovative oil and gas firms, however, believe today's turbulent market landscape provides an opportunity to grab competitive advantage by harnessing new technologies, such as the Internet of Everything.

Today's supply chains form the arteries and veins that keep global trade alive, connecting a largely borderless, always-on world economy. New innovations offer disruptive possibilities for the future of global trade. It's easy to hypothesize that Star Trek-style teleportation, drones, 3-D printing, and space logistics, will change trading. But the biggest shift to the supply chain will see it digitally connected and becoming part of the Internet of Things.

For the past five years, the Pyhäsalmi mine in central Finland has been using passive high-frequency RFID tags to record when workers enter or leave a mine shaft. Since that time, says Kimmo Luukkonen, the mine's managing director, the technology has improved management's visibility into who is underground and when, and hence has increased its safety program's efficiency and accuracy. The company plans to expand that RFID solution to monitor who carries explosive detonators into the mine.

IBM says it will invest $3bn over the next four years to establish a new Internet of Things (IoT) unit, and that it is building a cloud-based open platform designed to help clients and ecosystem partners build IoT systems.

As manufacturing firms evolve towards an integrated approach to supply chain management, it is important to consider the role of third-party logistics in the value chain as well as the enabling technologies that support this evolution. A new report from IDC Manufacturing Insights, Perspective: Use of Mobility Tools in the 3PL Industry, examines the role of mobile technology in supporting integration and performance improvements in the 3PL industry.