CES Asia, held for the second time in Shanghai last week, featured speakers from across the consumer electronics space, including Huawei, Intel, Alibaba and JD.com, who threw out some astonishing stats and forecasts as they talked about everything from network speeds in 2040 to the rapidly expanding middle class in Asia. Here’s a summary of the most striking numbers:

Kevin Ho, president of Huawei’s handset group:
The number of IoT devices per person is forecast to jump from two in 2015 to 25 by 2025 and to 1,000 by 2040. Connections will grow from 4.5 billion last year to 100 billion in 2025 and 100 trillion in 2040, which will drive annual traffic increases of 45 per cent. Peak connection speeds will expand from 1Gb/s last year to 10Gb/s in 2025 and 3,000Gb/s in 2040.

Jurgen Boyny, Gfk’s global director for consumer electronics:
By 2030 at least 50 per cent of the population will be middle class, with two-thirds of those people living in Asia. About 50 per cent of the world’s population lives in cities, with that percentage forecast to jump to two-thirds by 2030.

Shawn DuBravac, chief economist and senior director of research at (event organiser) Consumer Technology Association:
Global sales of virtual reality gear to expand 500 per cent this year and double in 2017.

JD.com, CTO of Chen Zhang:
The number of interconnected devices to reach 6.5 billion in 2016, up 30 per cent from this year.

Intel video during keynote:
In just 24 hours on the internet in China there were 50,000 Weibo posts, 2,721 Didi taxi bookings and $1 million spent on Alibaba.

Yin Jing, president of Alibaba’s Tmall 3C and home appliances business unit:
The e-commerce giant delivers about 400,000 packages every day.

Olaf Kastner, BMW’s president and CEO for China:
BMW is testing autonomous vehicles at up to 120K/h, not just in city scenarios.

Zhang Hong, general manager of uSens, a San Jose-based VR startup:
Head-mounted displays (now used for VR) were first developed in 1968 and only became more comfortable and lighter recently. It’s taken a long time because companies didn’t invest in the technology — unlike in the PC sector.